CSDC 361

Our modern era is marked by the complex phenomenon of economic and financial globalization, a process that progressively integrates national economies at the level of the exchange of goods and services and of financial transactions. In this process, an ever growing number of those involved in the economic sector is prompted to adopt a more global perspective concerning the choices that they must make with regard to future growth and profits. The new perspective of global society does not simply consist in the presence of economic and financial bonds between national forces at work in different countries, which have moreover always been present, but in the pervasiveness and the absolutely unprecedented nature of the system of relations that is developing. The role of financial markets is becoming ever more decisive and central. Following the liberalization of capital exchange and circulation, these market dimensions have increased enormously and with incredible speed, to the point that agents can “in real time”, transfer large quantities of capital from one part of the globe to another. This is a multifaceted reality that is difficult to decipher, since it expands at different levels and is in continuous evolution along paths that cannot easily be predicted.