ECIPE Lunch Seminar: Emerging protectionist threats in the wake of global financial crisis

Financial crisis, bank collapses and disgraced
stock market traders are now household conversation points across the world. From
those with the ability to influence events, the emergency response has come in
the form of colossal bail out packages, as governments and central banks attempt
to avert complete global financial meltdown. But it is the ensuing policy
response that is potentially of wider and longer-term significance for global economic
stability. The financial protectionism that is likely to arise in response to
the crisis will have potential spill-overs into trade policy.

In this lunch seminar, Razeen Sally will address
what shape this response is already taking and the danger it poses. According
to Mr. Sally, five years of a “goldilocks global economy” has provided cover
for misguided trade policy around the world. But worsening global economic
conditions will expose cracks left by a decade of trade reform complacency and
fatigue.

Further postponing trade policy reforms in
response to financial fears will be dangerous and costly. It will slow down
globalisation’s advance and its spread of benefits. Worse, creeping
protectionism threatens to unravel the historic market reforms of the 1980s and
‘90s. That would signal a retreat to a different era – the 1970s, which saw a
disastrous combination of domestic market restrictions, beggar-thy-neighbour
protectionism and stagflation.

You are invited to contribute your views to this lunch time discussion in a relaxed and informal setting.

Guest speaker: Razeen Sally, Co-founder and Director of ECIPE;
faculty member of the London School of Economics

RSVP by 10 November to info@ecipe.org
A light lunch will be served.