considered by market participants in making investment decisions is, in fact, extremely limited. As Mosley explains: Governments are pressured strongly to satisfy financial market prefer in terms of overall and government budget deficit levels but retain domestic policymaking latitude in other areas. The means by which governments achieve and the nature of government policies in other areas, do not concern financial market participants Governments retain a significant amount of policy autonomy and political accountability If, for domestic reasons, they prefer to retain traditional social democratic policies, for instance, they are quite able to do so. (2002, 305) This important finding is further reinforced by other recent work. On the basis of a detailed statistical analysis, Swank demonstrates that, contrary to the prevailing consensus, "rises in international capital openness, or exposure to international capital markets, do not exert significant downward pressure on the welfare state at moderate levels of budget imbalance [and] when budget deficits don't exist, some expansion of social protection is possible even in the context of international capital mobility" (2002, 94 Financial markets, it seems, are neither as highly integrated as we are accustomed to thinking, nor as exacting in the audit of fiscal and monetary policy they are frequently assumed to engage in.