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Well, there is an academic term for what's going on: Financialization but it doesn't quite pack the same punch.
Financialization is a relatively new term used to discuss the emergence of a new form of capitalism in which financial markets dominate over the traditional industrial economy. Greta Krippner of the University of California - Los Angeles has written that "financialization" refers to a "pattern of accumulation in which profit making occurs increasingly through financial channels rather than through trade and commodity production." In the Introduction to the 2006 book Financialization and the World Economy, editor Gerald A. Epstein wrote that some scholars have insisted on a much more narrow use of the term: the ascendancy of "shareholder value" as a mode of corporate governance; or the growing dominance of capital market financial systems over bank-based financial systems.

Financialisation may be defined as: "the increasing dominance of the finance industry in the sum total of economic activity, of financial controllers in the management of corporations, of financial assets among total assets, of marketised securities and particularly equities among financial assets, of the stock market as a market for corporate control in determining corporate strategies, and of fluctuations in the stock market as a determinant of business cycles" (Dore 2002)

More popularly, however, financialization is understood to mean the vastly expanded role of financial motives, financial markets, financial actors and financial institutions in the operation of domestic and international economies. In his 2006 book, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century, American writer and commentator Kevin Phillips presented financialization as "a process whereby financial services, broadly construed, take over the dominant economic, cultural, and political role in a national economy." (page 268). Philips consider that the financialization of the U.S. economy follows the same pattern that marked the beginning of the decline of Hapsburg Spain in the 16th century, the Dutch trading empire in the 18th century, and the British empire in the 19th century



When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Jul 18th, 2008 at 07:55:40 AM EST
[ Parent ]
aka liquify assets and skedaddle...

The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it. Chinese Proverb.
by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Fri Jul 18th, 2008 at 11:46:02 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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