The article has two interlocking goals: (1) to assess the past 10 years of neoliberal-led forms of financial globalization, and (2) to provide a contextualization of the 1999 global credit crisis. Both objectives are discussed against the backdrop of the reforms implemented at the end of the Asian Crisis in 1999, that is, the so-called New International Financial Architecture (NIFA). I argue that the NIFA, which rested on the basic assumption of free capital mobility and low levels of state regulation, did not deliver on its promises that prudent (market-based) policies would lead to prosperity, growth and stability. To the contrary, the post-NIFA world has been marked by increasing levels of economic insecurity.
