Global Finance and Capital Adequacy Regulation: Recreating Capitalist Social Relations

Abstract

The paper argues that capital adequacy regulation has served to recreate the neoliberal form of capitalist social relations. It identifies two dimensions to this process. First, the paper argues that capital adequacy regulation in historical perspective can be understood to have incentivized, facilitated, and legitimated the kind of arbitrage that allow it to proceed. Second, it argues revisions to capital adequacy requirements serve to discipline mutual and cooperative forms of finance.JEL Classification: G28, P13, P16