As the financial system went global [in the 1980s], so competitionbetween financial centres – chiefly London and New York – took itscoercive toll . . . if the regulatory regime in London was less strict thanthat of the US, then the branches [of international banks] in the City ofLondon got the business rather than Wall Street. As lucrative businessnaturally flowed to wherever the regulatory regime was laxest, so thepolitical pressure on the regulators to look the other way mounted.3

The vicious circle of Destructive Global Competition (DGC) had gotgoing to such a point that it became self-sustaining. Once multinationalcorporations and global investors gained the ability to move capital andthousands of jobs seamlessly across national borders, the genie was outof the bottle and the vicious circle was set in train. Without realizing itgovernments were then caught in the endless pursuit of their ‘internationalcompetitiveness’ – caught in the game of forever outcompeting each otherat cutting taxes and regulations in a bid to retain jobs and inward invest-ment. From then on DGC drew politicians and governments into itsdestructive vortex, and it is now running beyond anyone’s control.

This blindness, we explain, isbecause society as a whole only sees competition’s constructive side, whilewe expose its hidden destructive side.