Institute for International Economics, 1988, 297 pp.
In this first-rate book a Japanese journalist with excellent connections shows in some detail what the governments of the leading industrial countries tried to do, and did, to bring some order into their financial and monetary relations from 1985 to 1987. Based largely on interviews, of which the most important are anonymous, he shows the play of forces and divergencies of view not only among countries but within most of the major capitals as well. He ends with a thoughtful analysis of why the best that was achieved was "an ad hoc process of adjustment" instead of the construction of a new basis for dealing with the continuing, and probably growing, difficulties of economic integration.
