The global financial customer and the spatiality of exclusion after the 'end of geography'

Abstract

This paper evaluates O'Brien's assertion that freer global financial flows and movement will eliminate the significance of geography for financial processes because enhanced global choice will create the global financial customer. We argue here, contra O'Brien, that expanded global choice in finance has contributed to the widening global income/wealth divide, both in the global North and the global South. Financial globalization has not made geography immaterial: instead, spatial location, informed by each area's historical and institutional background, continues to demarcate who has access to which financial services at what price. The US subprime crisis demonstrates dramatically that vulnerability to economically devastating financial crises varies dramatically across space at the national and sub-national levels.