How Do We Counter Financialisation?

Abstract

Financialisation being but the end product of a complex process, countering it is not a question of modifying individual behaviour but of changing the law. In sharecropping, the standard contract between landowner and labourer gets shared only based on what has actually been produced: risk is being shared along the terms of the contract guaranteeing to both parties a share of the produce, not a fixed quantity of it. Imbalance creeps in when rent is being paid without being a true share of wealth having been created, in what is nowadays called ‘consumer credit’: when interest is charged and paid from wealth that has not been generated through combining human labour with the resources lent as an investment but by the borrower mortgaging wages yet to come. Got historically added to the dysfunction of consumer lending, speculation with the meaning traditionally assigned to it in finance of ‘wagers on the rise or fall of the price of financial products’. Speculation doesn't add any economic value but shifts only amounts of money between bettors, generating a number of risks. Counterparty risk: the loser possibly defaulting, triggering then a damaging chain reaction of defaults. Moral hazard risk: bettors attempt to push the market in the direction favouring their bet. Systemic risk: bettors take advantage of the well-established fact that should they lose, the public sector will act as a saviour of last resort, bailing them out. This all can be redressed by law, and by law only.

Citation

Jorion, P. (2021), "How Do We Counter Financialisation?", Bourghelle, D., Pérez, R. and Rozin, P. (Ed.) Rethinking Finance in the Face of New Challenges (Critical Studies on Corporate Responsibility, Governance and Sustainability, Vol. 15), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 85-91. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2043-905920210000015016