Library Portal | UWC Portal | National ETDs | Global ETDs
    • Login
    Contact Us | About Us | FAQs | Login
    View Item 
    •   DSpace Home
    • Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences
    • Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS)
    • Research Articles (PLAAS)
    • View Item
    •   DSpace Home
    • Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences
    • Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS)
    • Research Articles (PLAAS)
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    The vampire squid: Value, crisis and the power of finance

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    du_toit_vampire_squid_2019.pdf (438.5Kb)
    Date
    2019
    Author
    du Toit, Andries
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    Over the last five decades the power and global reach of financial institutions and finance capital to organize economic, social and political life has grown seemingly unchecked. This is manifested in the ability of international markets to limit the economic sovereignty of states; the power of activist shareholders to dictate policy to company management, often at the expense of long‐term strategy and employment creation; and the advantages offered by returns to investments in financial assets over those in manufacturing and services. All of these developments have contributed to the apparently inescapable triumph of neoliberalism and the deepening of global inequality. They have also led to the economic havoc of the 2008 financial crisis, which plunged the global economy into a period of austerity from which it has not yet emerged (Thompson, 2017). It is no wonder, then, that money markets and financial institutions have fallen from being the vaunted legislators of the world to become, for some, its new pariahs. A new consensus is emerging that many of our economic ills stem from the fact that banks and financiers, instead of merely facilitating the production of ‘real’ wealth in the form of services and goods, have slipped their bonds to become independent players in their own right. They are now seen at best as the tail wagging the dog and at worst as outright parasites: ‘a great vampire squid’, as one journalist described Goldman Sachs, ‘wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money’ (Taibbi, 2010).
    URI
    https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12510
    http://hdl.handle.net/10566/4751
    Collections
    • Research Articles (PLAAS)

    DSpace 6.3 | Ubuntu | Copyright © University of the Western Cape
    Contact Us | Send Feedback
    Theme by 
    Atmire NV
     

     

    Browse

    All of DSpaceCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

    My Account

    Login

    Statistics

    View Usage Statistics

    DSpace 6.3 | Ubuntu | Copyright © University of the Western Cape
    Contact Us | Send Feedback
    Theme by 
    Atmire NV