- Provides a clear narrative on financial innovation
before 2007 and political obstacles to reform after 2007
- Accessibly written for a wide audience
- Interdisciplinary approach - economics, politics,
accounting, sociology
What is the relationship between the financial system and politics? In a democratic
system, what kind of control should elected governments have over the financial markets?
What policies should be implemented to regulate them? What is the role played by different
elites - financial, technocratic, and political - in the operation and regulation of the
financial system? And what role should citizens, investors, and savers play?
These are some of the questions addressed in this challenging analysis of the particular
features of the contemporary capitalist economy in Britain, the USA, and Western Europe.
The authors argue that the causes of the financial crisis lay in the bricolage and
innovation in financial markets, resulting in long chains and circuits of transactions and
instruments that enabled bankers to earn fees, but which did not sufficiently take into
account system risk, uncertainty, and unintended consequences.
In the wake of the crisis, the authors argue that social scientists,
governments, and citizens need to re-engage with the political dimensions of financial
markets.
This book offers a controversial and accessible exploration of the disorders of
our financial capitalism and its justifications. With an innovative emphasis on the
economically 'undisclosed' and the political 'mystifying', it combines technical
understanding of finance, cultural analysis, and al political account of interests and
institutions.
Readership: Academics and researchers across the social sciences,
policy makers and advisors, and all those interested in understanding the current
financial crisis
Table of Contents
Introduction
1: After the Great Complacence: the Challenge of the Undisclosed and the Mystified
Section I: : Financial Innovation and the Undisclosed
2: Derivatives: Conjuncture, Bricolage, and Circuits
3: Hedge Funds and Private Equity as War Machines
4: Banking for Themselves: the Transaction Generating Machine
Section 2: Beyond Democratic Control? Mystified Politics Before and After the Crisis
5: Mystification Undermines Regulation Before 2007
6: Closure: Distributive Coalition vs. Democratic Opening
7: In Charge? Political Classes and Technocratic Elites
Conclusion
8: What is To Be Done? Mobilising for Simpler, Sustainable Finance
304 pages, Hardcover