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G8 Financial Crisis Governance
The Group of Eight (G8) has had extensive and even existential experience with financial crises (Kirton 2007). The groups creation was driven by financial crises created by and in the US, in the form of the Nixon Administration’s unilateral destruction of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates on August 15, 1971 and the imminent bankruptcy of New York City at the time of the first summit at Rambouillet in November 1975. Then came a succession of real and potential crises, notably Britain’s need for support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the mid 1970s and Italy’s need in 1976, the developing countries debt crisis of the early 1980s, the American stock market plunge of October 1987, the attack on the European Monetary System (EMS), the Mexican peso crisis starting on December 20, 1994, the Asian-turned-global financial crisis of 1997–1999, the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America, the Enron–dot.com bust and the America-turned-global financial crisis from 2008 to now. Since the G8’s 1975 start, such crises have been created by others to afflict a vulnerable America, and been created by America to attack
the rest of the world. In both cases such crisis have been conscious, calculated controlled and targeted, as on August 15, 1971 and September 11, 2001, and unco.nscious, uncalculated, uncontrolled and untargeted events characterized by contagion, complexity and uncertainty that no one can fully comprehend, as in the global crisis from 2008 until now.