The god we worship

“The subprime debacle and its sequels train a spotlight on financialization. When properly embedded in structures of social control, finance can help to allocate capital, facilitate investment and smooth demand. But if it is unaccountable and unregulated it becomes sovereign in the re-allocation process, and can grab the lion’s share of the gains it makes possible, including anticipated gains before they have been realized. The problem is aggravated as financial intermediaries proliferate and take advantage of asymmetries in access to information and power imbalances. Such distortions multiply as ‘financialization’ takes hold. It is boosted as the logic of finance becomes ubiquitous, feeding on a commodification of every aspect of life and the life-course—student loans, baby bonds, mortgages, home equity release, credit-card debt; health insurance, individualized pension funds. Financialization also encourages corporations to privilege financial functions and to see themselves as chance collections of assets which, as circumstances change, must be continually broken up and reconfigured. While the individual is encouraged to think of him or herself as a two-legged cost and profit centre, the corporation is simply an accidental assemblage to be continually shuffled in response to fleeting market signals.” – Robin Blackburn, “The Subprime Crisis”