The global financial crisis has brought home an important point: the United States is still a major center of the financial world. Regional financial crises (such as the Asian financial crisis, Japan’s banking crisis, or the Latin American debt crisis) can occur without seriously infecting the rest of the global financial system. But when the . financial system stumbles, it may bring major parts of the rest of the world down with it. 6 The reason is that the United States is the main guarantor of the international financial system, the provider of dollars widely used as currency reserves and as.
