Recurrent instability has characterized the global financial system since the 1980s. This instability and the resultant disruptions - to financial and foreign exchange markets, causing bankruptcies and sovereign debt defaults - are linked, in this book, to shortcomings of the global financial system which tend to generate cycles of boom and bust in credit flows. These cycles are set in motion by the monetary impulses of major industrial countries and are amplified and propagated through the operation of global financial markets. Fabrizio Saccomanni argues that to counter such systemic instability requires that national authorities give adequate weight to financial stability objectives when formulating their monetary and regulatory policies. He maintains that appropriate multilateral strategies to deal with unsustainable trends in credit aggregates and asset prices should be devised in the institutions of international monetary and financial cooperation.