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.