The focus of financial policies in developing countries should be industrialization and stability. A common feature of all modern examples of industrialization is that they have all succeeded in making finance serve industry and trade not the other way round. This has often necessitated a considerable amount of intervention and control over financial activities. On the other hand, despite widespread claims for efficiency of financial markets, financial liberalization in many countries in recent years has generated more costs than benefits. These have included persistent misalignment of prices of financial assets, resulting in inefficiencies in the allocation of resources; sharply increased short-term volatility of asset prices, resulting in greater uncertainty, shorter maturities and higher interest rates; excessive borrowing to finance speculative asset purchases and consumption, resulting in unsustainable stocks of debt, increased financial fragility and reduced household savings; and loss of autonomy in pursuing interest-rate and exchange-rate policies in accordance with the needs of trade and industry.