Activating these elements of what is known as the global financial safety net does not require a dramatic stage-managed meeting of heads of government, at the G20 or somewhere like it. It can be done through relatively informal conference calls between a group of central bankers and their senior staff. It is a community as cosmopolitan as that in a scientific discipline, but smaller and even more close-knit. It has outliers in national treasuries, at the IMF and the BIS, and in many of the largest banks and asset managers. The ecosystem is completed by academic commentators and influential
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