Returning agency back to finance: the critical role of politics and governance in financialization

Abstract

Financial markets have become a central aspect of our daily lives. This is due to the liberalization of global capital markets during the last two decades. This has led to increased liquidity and enhanced volatility within the financial system as the amounts traded daily, monthly, annually are sometimes larger than total global GDP. This has affected our daily lives profoundly and indeed, as the current global financial crisis, leaves no country untouched. In examining the present financial crisis, the paper argues that we have enough regulations and systems but we do not have effective regulative practices to enable compliance, control, and oversight. Indeed, the regulatory response to current developments in the financial sector has been both slow and inadequate. The paper starts by providing a context and the evolution of the “new” financial system and its attendant practices. The paper argues that the crisis could have been averted had there been a proper and effective governance mechanism and appropriate instruments employed to effect such compliance. Such mechanisms and instruments would also need to critically interrogate the epistemological foundations of accepted practices and wisdom. The paper suggests that the present crisis provides a circuit broker for a radical rethink of the present financial system and practices.