Can the current post-Bretton Woods international monetary system prevent a return to the beggar-thy-neighbor policies and competitive devaluations that so harmed international prosperity in the 1930s? What are the system's flaws? Can they be corrected, and if so, how? An expert panel will address these and related issues.

Hope springs eternal among policy makers in Europe’s beleaguered periphery. At five minutes to midnight in Athens, and with a bank run having started in Madrid, these policy makers cling to the forlorn hope that somehow Germany is going to relent on its strong opposition to euro bonds.

We simply have to face the fact that banking is fundamentally risky. As I decided long ago when working in banks, the reason we needed to wear dark suits and have classic buildings was to look conservative in order to offset the real riskiness of what we were doing. 

In a new book entitled “Financing Failure: A Century of Bailouts,” Vern McKinley provides the most detailed account yet of the government’s decision-making process during these momentous events.

Greece's economic and political unraveling could not be coming at a worse moment for President Obama. The crisis has the potential to send shock waves not simply through Europe but also through global financial markets on the very eve of the U.S. presidential election.

The main problem with the recent IMF programmes to countries such as Greece and Portugal has not been one of size or duration but rather one of policy misdiagnosis. 

In going along in May 2010 with the European charade that Greece did not have a solvency problem, was the IMF really standing for the proposition that the laws of economics do not and will not give way to political considerations?