The Ascendancy of Finance
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.29 (826 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1509509291 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 200 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-02-27 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
In The Ascendancy of Finance, Joseph Vogl recasts nearly half a millennia of economic history to argue that the symbiosis of the finance and political spheres is longstanding, and that the informalization of policy-making, as seen most dramatically in 2008, threatens to bypass democracy. Anchored in a concise history of the modern state and its claims to sovereignty, Vogl?s analysis focuses on the strangest creation of modern capitalism, money." - Wolfgang Streeck, emeritus director, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne "It is no overstatement to call this book groundbreaking. Indispensable reading, and, in these tumultuous times, the Ascendancy of Finance is both illuminating and chilling." - Janine Wedel, George Mason University. "Who is sovereign in the modern state? working like a detective to trace the h
Legitimized by a rhetoric of emergency, ad hoc bodies have usurped democratically elected governments. Combining historical and theoretical analysis, Vogl argues that over the last three centuries, finance has become a "fourth estate," marked by the systematic interconnection of treasury and finance, of political and private economic interests. The Ascendancy of Finance provides valuable and unsettling insight into the genesis of modern power and where it truly resides.. Political systems are "imprisoned" by the regime of finance, while the corporate model suffuses society, enclosing populations in the production of financial capital. The global financial crisis of 2008 ushered in a system of informal decision-making in the grey zone between economics and politics. Against this historical background, Vogl explores the latest phase in the financialization of government, namely the dramatic transfer of power from states to markets in the latter half of the 20th century. In line with the neoliberal credo, the recent crisis has been used to realize the politically impossible and to re-align executive power with the interests of the finance industry. From the liberalization of credit and capital markets to the privatization of social security, he shows how policy ha
Joseph Vogl is Professor of Modern German Literature, Literary, Media and Cultural Studies at the Humboldt University of Berlin. . He is also permanent Visiting Professor at Princeton University