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This paper looks at fiscal sustainability and fiscal risks from a comprehensive, global perspective. It argues that the benefits of consolidation have to be re-assessed given that industrialised countries have entered uncharted waters with unsustainable public debt dynamics and enormous contingent liabilities across sectors and countries coinciding with strong, non-linear and potentially highly adverse fiscal-financial interlinkages. This suggests that there would be significant benefits from fiscal consolidation without delay and that there is a need for caution against excessive faith in fiscal engineering.
The paper takes a closer look at offshore banking—a pervasive practice that has played a role in recent crises. Offshore banking is an increasingly attractive alternative to the sometimes heavily regulated financial markets of emerging economies. From a microeconomic vantage point, offshore banks seem to exploit the risk-return tradeoff by being more profitable than onshore banks, and in many instances also more leveraged. Risks stemming from offshore activities may be easily transmitted onshore with systemic consequences. Current prudential and supervisory frameworks are broadly adequate for risk management if effectively and universally implemented.