Financialization

In recent years, diverging demand and growth regimes have received greater scholarly attention. In particular, the intersection between different variants of Comparative Political Economy and the post-Keynesian macroeconomic analysis provides a promising avenue for understanding the main dynamics of various growth regimes. Yet, the majority of these studies has focused on the global North. In this contribution, we expand this analysis to the global South by examining eight large emerging capitalist economies (ECEs) – Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, and Turkey – during the periods 2000-2008 and 2009-2019. In so doing, we not only uncover the main demand and growth regimes of ECEs for the two periods, but also link these results to the main trends in the demand and growth regimes of developed capitalist economies (DCEs) for both periods. One of the main findings of our research is that ECEs did not follow the same path as DCEs after the Great Recession. While there was a clear shift in the demand and growth regimes of DCEs towards an export orientation, the main pattern in the ECEs remained the continuation of a trend that had already emerged before the 2007-09 crisis, i.e. domestic demand-led models. Finally, we provide some observations on the puzzle of resilient domestic demand-led models in ECEs.

Since the 1980s, American-led financialization promoting capital and labour mobility has influenced Asia, but the Japanese and Chinese trajectories in financialization of consumption (consumer credit development) have diverged, with the 1995–2013 contraction in Japan contrasting with the skyrocketing growth in China since 2010. I argue the divergence can be attributed to the varying levels of compatibility between American financial norms and their social norms, the different timings of their integration into the global economy (the influence of ‘embedded liberalism’ or neoliberalism), and the interests of key actors of each country. Anti-liberal Japanese elites reversed the financialization of consumption to preserve anti-capitalistic ‘industrious norms’ and strong attachments to intermediary organisations, which are the cornerstones of their dominance. In contrast, economic rationalism embedded in Chinese society since late imperial China, when capital and labour mobility was enhanced by removing fixed intermediary organisations considerably under autocracy, has facilitated China’s financialization of consumption.

As finanças alcançam, no período atual, uma centralidade inédita em todos os campos da vida social, assumindo um papel determinante sobre as dinâmicas do espaço geográfico. Na medida em que envolve transformações na economia, na política e na sociedade como um todo, a financeirização implica uma renovação dos próprios conteúdos do território e do cotidiano. Partindo de uma aproximação teórica sobre o processo em tela, o artigo busca desvendar certos nexos da creditização do território brasileiro para, em um segundo momento, focar a capilaridade alcançada pelas finanças entre a população pobre e seus impactos no cotidiano, onde a incorporação de nexos financeiros se combina à emergência de novas contra-racionalidades.

The finances reach, in the current period, an unprecedented centrality in all fields of social life, playing a leading role on the dynamics of geographical space in contemporaneity (SANTOS, 1996; FRENCH et al., 2011). As far as it involves changes in economy, in politics in and society as a whole (Christopherson et al., 2013), financialization implies a renewal of the contents of territory and of daily life. From a theoretical approach about this process, the article seeks to uncover certain links of the Brazilian territory creditization to, in a second moment, focus the reach achieved by finance among the poor and their impact on daily life, where the incorporation of financial links combines itself with the emergence of new counter -rationalities.

Las finanzas alcanzan, en el período actual, una centralidad inédita en todos los campos de la vida social, asumiendo un papel determi-nante sobre las dinámicas del espacio geográfico. En la medida en que involucra transformaciones en la economía, en la política y en la sociedad como un todo, la financierización implica una renovación de los propios contenidos del territorio y del cotidiano. A partir de una aproximación teórica sobre este proceso, el artículo busca desvelar ciertos nexos de la creditización del territorio brasileño para, en un segundo momento, enfocar la ca-pilaridad alcanzada por las finanzas entre la población pobre y sus impactos en el cotidiano, donde la incorporación de nexo financieros se combina a la emergencia de nuevas contra-racionalidades.

The Brazilian legislation, over the years, has undergone several changes that have altered the way the public housing policy was conducted. For many years, these amendments were only based on government programmes, however, with the growth of globalization and increasing the country's ever-increasing insertion in the capitalist model of market economy, increasingly the state has been ceded space to the financial market so that this Inject resources into housing production, in exchange for generous margins of profit. This article seeks to demonstrate how this phenomenon has been constructed historically and in which way there has been the legalization of financialization in the Brazilian real estate market. One of the hypothesis is that this movement has created a surge of insecurity in the citizen who seeks to buy a property and has assured the functioning of an increasingly targeted system for large capitalists, to the detriment of the population. So it seeks to arise if this phenomenon has not subverted and disregarded the fundamental constitutional principles, violating one of the pillars of the Republic: the dignity of the human person.

Whereas the active role of the state in steering financialization is consensual in advanced economies , the financialization of emerging market economies is usually examined through the prism of dependency: this downplays the domestic political functions of financialization and the agency of the state. With the consolidation of state capitalist regimes in the semi-periphery after the Global Financial Crisis, different interpretations emerged-some linking state capitalism with de-financialization, others with coercive projects deepening it. Preferring a more granular and multi-dimensional approach, I analyse how different facets of financialization might represent political risks or opportunities for state capitalist projects: Based on the Hungarian example, I first explain how the constitution of a 'financial vertical' after 2010 inaugurated a new mode of statecraft. Second, I show how the financial vertical enabled rentier bargains between state and society after 2015 by deepening the financialization of social policy and housing in response to a looming crisis of competitiveness.

Despite its comprehensiveness, Lenin’s classical analysis of the imperialistic nature of capitalism deserves to be considered under a new lens. This article is an attempt to highlight some important features of late imperialism. While Lenin’s analysis is the focal point of critical inquiry, the article goes beyond his account to examine some important features of classical theory that remained unaddressed by Lenin. The attempt is to dialectically sublate Lenin’s theory with the analysis of contemporary imperialism. It is suggested that the mechanism of financial accumulation, concentration and centralisation of finance capital is broader than classical conception of finance capital. Another important driver of contemporary imperialism is the globalisation of industrial capital driven by transnational corporations and arm’s length production. The central feature of this new form of production is global monopoly capital resulting from combined interplay of concentration and internationalisation. The article also endeavours to understand the global proletarianisation of labour as a consequence of the accumulation at the world scale; a point only obliquely addressed by Lenin. The article concludes by comparing capitalism’s crisis and decay in Lenin’s analysis with the capitalism of present times.

We argue that a new form of finance capital has been consolidated in the United States since the 2008 crisis-defined as a fusion of financial and industrial capital. In this regime, financiers have become more entrenched in the governance of nonfinancial corporations while, reciprocally, industrial firm managers have increasingly become financiers. Indeed, this fusion has taken place on two interconnected levels: (1) within the nonfinancial corporation itself, and (2) between the nonfinancial corporation and the financial sector. Internal diversification and internationalization over the postwar era led to the reorganization of the industrial corporation as a financial group, managing not concrete production processes, but portfolios of financial assets. This was reinforced by the increasing power of outside investors over the neoliberal period. However, new forms of financial organization that emerged after 2008 produced tighter and more direct linkages between external financiers and the nonfinancial corporation, constituting the new finance capital.

Objetivo: A partir de uma abordagem de Economia Política, analisar as causas, consequências e tendências engendradas pela globalização financeira, inclusive sua relação com os processos de assimetria monetária e financeirização, impactando em particular no espaço de autonomia (“policy space”) para políticas desenvolvimentistas em economias periféricas. O curso será dividido em três blocos: (i) Globalização financeira; (ii) Assimetria monetária-financeira e hierarquia de moedas; (iii) Financeirização em economias periféricas.

As relações entre cidades e capitalismo são históricas e se configuraram desde seu surgimento. Apesar de antigas, sempre foram complexas e envolveram forte mediação do Estado, especialmente sob o aspecto regulatório. No momento atual de hegemonia neoliberal e da dominância financeira, essas relações passam a se revestir de especial complexidade, com as cidades desempenhando papel de destaque nos processos de acumulação capitalista. Ao mesmo tempo, a dimensão regulatória ganha força como maneira privilegiada de intervenção estatal em favor da adoção de valores tipicamente neoliberais e da disseminação da lógica financeira. A tese tem como objetivo explorar as relações entre capitalismo sob dominância financeira, espaço urbano e regulação legal sob uma perspectiva multidisciplinar. Para tanto, acionará elementos dos campos teóricos do planejamento urbano, economia política e direito. Tais relações são abordadas a partir da dimensão fundiária urbana, em um estudo de caso sobre a mais recente lei nacional de regularização fundiária, n. 13.465 (BRASIL, 2017) e as transformações por ela pretendidas. A partir do estudo de caso, apresenta-se a hipótese de que está em curso no Brasil uma tentativa de homogeneização do regime jurídico fundiário a partir do instituto da propriedade privada individual, fixando as bases para uma nova etapa do processo de mercantilização da terra e ampliando as possibilidades de sua utilização como ativo financeiro, com destaque para seu uso como lastro de títulos securitizáveis. A compreensão do processo de utilização da regulação legal para o aprofundamento da interação entre espaço urbano e capitalismo sob dominância financeira, sob o aspecto fundiário, é o objetivo que se pretende cumprir com a presente tese.

There is an extensive body of literature detailing the forces behind and experiences of alienation in a modern capitalist world. However, social scientific interest in alienation had become parochial and balkanized by the 1970s. To reconstruct a unifying theory of alienation that addresses general features of capitalism, such as compulsory growth and commodification, and particular phases like financialized capitalism, we begin with the notion of futurelessness. Futurelessness refers to a deficient relationship to the future in which people's senses of possibility ossify, narrow, or dissipate. It may result from inclusion in and exclusion from capitalist mechanisms or processes. Moreover, processes of inclusion and exclusion may appear more voluntary or involuntary. With these general terms, we identify four manifestations of futurelessness in financial capitalism: commercial exhaustion, imaginative marginalization, therapeutic nowism, and pragmatic denialism. The conclusion addresses future-sustenance in an alienating world and the prospects of a more systemic and synthetic approach to alienation.

There has long been a tension in Fredric Jameson's work regarding the extent to which it is possible or warranted to develop transhistorical categories for literary interpretation across of the whole of the capitalist mode of production. In my contribution to this symposium, I take up the problem of how Jameson's Allegory and Ideology participates in such questions in its consideration of periodisation and narrativisation through the particular construction of allegory, from the early modern age to our financial present.

New York stands at a crossroads. As thousands of tenants fall behind on rent amid the pandemic-induced recession, many property owners will be unable to make their mortgage payments. Private equity investment firms like Blackstone and Jared Kushner's Cadre have amassed billions just for this moment and are ready to swoop in, purchase properties at rock-bottom prices and then generate returns by driving up rents, displacing tenants and adding to New York's already record-high rates of homelessness. That's exactly what happened in 2008, when private equity firms took advantage of the mortgage crisis by buying up a slew of relatively affordable housing and setting out to maximize rents and skirt regulations. But there’s another option. The city and state governments have existing programs at their disposal and bills in the works that could convert distressed buildings into social housing—housing that is deeply affordable, decommodified, and democratically operated.
These are the two paths facing us today: widening inequality and corporate profiteering, or expanded affordability and community well-being for decades to come.