The current financial crisis should be viewed as a network crisis, because due to a whole series of deregulation measures, financial reforms and technological and financial innovations, the world has become closely networked into a global market, with laws, and policies functioning within national boundaries. This essay points out that the increased integration of the global market today brooks no further postponement of major reforms. The risk is that if sound, transparent and effective regulation is not built into the international financial architecture to foster open trade in goods and services, emerging markets would neither have the confidence for investment abroad, nor would they have the confidence to open their markets to higher volatility and contagion risks. This crisis therefore is likely to trigger considerable changes in the way we think about the behaviour of markets and the proper role of regulation and governments, particularly in crisis management. What is needed is a dynamic, evolutionary, interactive, and holistic understanding of how complex markets evolve and mutate.
