The end of the Wall Street world

Over the last decade, Wall Street has become an important foreign policy actor in its own right, almost as important as the lobbyists on K-Street and the White House on Pensylvania Avenue. The ebb and flow of capital has been a decisive international force in determining the fate of nations – most recently illustrated in the cases of Greece and Ireland. As an aide to President Clinton once said: in a second life he would like to come back as the bond market.

But Wall Street has influenced foreign policy in a deeper way too: by changing the way that successive US administrations see the world. Not by focusing on the bottom-line. International relations cannot be reduced to cost/benefit analyses. But by making the US look at partners the way Wall Street looks at companies – by growth rates and future share of markets rather than history and market capitalisation.