This book considers the new global banking and financial systems which have become the subject of an unprecedented experiment involving new and unquantifiable risks. It asks such questions as: should banking and the securities business be undertaken by the same organizations; can banks safely engage in a wide range of high risk non banking activities; why are all the major economies of the world repealing the laws that have carefully regulated what the banks can do since the 1920s and why did the Bank of Credit and Commerce International fail? Based on up to the minute research, Dale attempts to put into perspective the significance of recent developments and compares them with the events of 1929, when 9000 banks collapsed with losses equivalent to $6 billion. This is a warning about structural faults at the heart of banking systems worldwide.