Session 3: Financialization Flashcards
Who are the institutional investors? What is their problem?
the managers of pension funds, insurance funds, and sovereign wealth funds. Together, they have more money than the total global GDP, and are still growing faster than global GDP. The main problem they face is that they have more money than can be invested into the world economy
What is the employment evolution of financialization?
Finance and real estate have more than doubled in terms of their value added, but does not employ more people than 20/30 years ago
What are the 7 dimensions of financialization?
1) fin-z as a historically recurring process, singaling the autumn of hegemonic powers
2) the financial services revolution
3) financial sector becoming dominant in economic terms
4) fin-z of non-financial firms
5) fin-z as assetization
6) fin-z of state and public sector
7) fin-z of households
What does the case of Anker corporation tell us about financialization?
Anker, a medium sized company which manufactured cash registers since 1900, was re-established in the UK in the 60s, and then was merged with a Dutch ICT company. The HQs of Anker remained in the UK, but the company was registered in the NL. This led them to start a currency rate arbitrage scheme, where they gained profit simply from moving money between currencies. At some point, Anker realized that it had no more need to produce cash registers, and could make sufficient money off this financial scheme. Anker is the embodiement of the financialization of non-financial firms
What is a brief definition of financialization?
the increasing dominance of financial actors, markets, logics, measurements and narratives, resulting in the restructuring of economies, fims, states and household. It is both an explanandum and explananas
