The Money Changers A Guided Tour Through Global Currency Markets

This book provides an understanding of what goes on in the sector of foreign currency trading that has exploded during the last twenty years. The author gives a behind the scenes portrait and guided tour of the places, computer systems, electronic circuitry, people, banking institutions and other institutions involved in moving gigantic volumes of money around the world. He does this with a sense of the history of how the system has evolved in recent years, including the arrival of the new global currency, the Euro, and the currency crashes that seem to have become a more frequent feature of international finance in the era of globalization and freed up money markets.

Robert G. Williams is Voehringer Professor of Economics at Guilford College, North Carolina.

A Glance at Foreign Exchange at Breakfast * A Visit to the Local Bank: What Do Money Changers Buy and Sell? * How Do Money Changers Arrange Deals? * Who Are the Actors in the World's Biggest Market? * Where Deals are Made: The Amazing Geography of Money Changer Enclaves * Professor Smith Gets FX'd in Tokyo: Could He Have Known What Would Happen Beforehand? * Inside the Trading Room: What Causes the Rates to Change? * Behind the Fish Tank: FX Talk Over Tea * How Currencies are Delivered: Snapshot of an Evolving System * The Big Apple: Electronic Dollar Deliveries through CHIPS, the World's Biggest Payments Processor * Time to Settle Up: CHIPS Closes the International Dollar Day at the New York Fed 4:30-5:00 pm * In the City of London after the Russian Default: Anatomy of Currency Crises, or What do the Mexican Peso (1994), the South Asian Crisis (1997-98), and the Russian Ruble (1998) have in Common? * The Euro in its Infancy * The Euro as an Alternative to the Dollar as World Currency * Currency Crises in Perspective: Will the Dollar be Next?



A Glance at Foreign Exchange at Breakfast * A Visit to the Local Bank: What Do Money Changers Buy and Sell? * How Do Money Changers Arrange Deals? * Who Are the Actors in the World's Biggest Market? * Where Deals are Made: The Amazing Geography of Money Changer Enclaves * Professor Smith Gets FX'd in Tokyo: Could He Have Known What Would Happen Beforehand? * Inside the Trading Room: What Causes the Rates to Change? * Behind the Fish Tank: FX Talk Over Tea * How Currencies are Delivered: Snapshot of an Evolving System * The Big Apple: Electronic Dollar Deliveries through CHIPS, the World's Biggest Payments Processor * Time to Settle Up: CHIPS Closes the International Dollar Day at the New York Fed 4:30-5:00 pm * In the City of London after the Russian Default: Anatomy of Currency Crises, or What do the Mexican Peso (1994), the South Asian Crisis (1997-98), and the Russian Ruble (1998) have in Common? * The Euro in its Infancy * The Euro as an Alternative to the Dollar as World Currency * Currency Crises in Perspective: Will the Dollar be Next?