How financial markets work, in plain English! An authoritative, complete, and up-to-date guide to today's global financial system. The 'jargon-busting' guide to global finance: everything today's manager, investor, policymaker, and citizen needs to know. Crystal-clear introductions to banking, central banks, insurance, money and bond markets, equities, futures, options, swaps, FX, hedge funds, private equity, and how they fit together. Financial crises: what's happened, why -- and what the new landscape looks like. This is the most complete, authoritative, and up-to-date guide to the workings of financial markets, the global financial system, and their immense and relentless impact. Renowned financial author Glen C. Arnold assumes no prior financial knowledge, teaching through real world examples. He presents an invaluable international perspective, comparing the workings of major financial institutions and centers worldwide, from the U.S. Federal Reserve and Wall Street to the European and Japanese central banks, the IMF, and the World Bank. Arnold begins with a plain-English overview of the purposes of global financial markets and the institutions and individual markets that now comprise them. Next, he drills down to throughly illuminate each component of the financial markets, and the linkages among them. Arnold covers retail, corporate, investment, and other forms of banking; central banks; pooled investment funds; insurance; money markets; corporate, government, and exotic bond markets; equities and systems for raising capital; futures, options, and swaps; foreign exchange markets; hedge funds and private equity, and more. He concludes with insightful discussions of global financial regulation, the impact of recent and continuing global financial crises; the responses of governments; and the shape of the radically new global financial landscape.