The book explains how U.S. regulators and foreign policy makers have struggled to keep pace with the internationalization of banks. The nation has modified its laws and foreign economic policies to protect the domestic banking system, ensure the stability of international financial markets, and, at times, promote specific foreign policy goals. Although U.S. policies have often hinged on the actions of private banks, such policies rarely succeed. Despite mutual dependence, the nation's goals often conflict with the imperatives of private business. The author analyzes these conflicts with case studies that include the voluntary foreign credit restraint of the 1960s, the rise of international banking facilities in the 1970s, and strategies for coping with the global debt crisis in the 1980s.