How crises reshaped the world financial system

More than a century on, financial globalisation’s second age has given the day trader tapping at her phone a menu of options that would put Keynes’s imaginary gentleman to shame. Though war has returned to Europe, few financial channels have truly been closed. There has been no repeat of the wholesale shuttering of stock and bond markets that took place amid the first world war. The Londoner of 2024 can pick any of dozens of stockmarkets around the world in which to place his money without exertion.