Existing scholarship offers only two regulatory-minded framings of finance’s problems

Evidence

One is to suggest that the problems of the otherwise functional and legitimate financial sector stem from being either too cultural (in the sense that financiers, at some level, make decisions based not on “objective” data but on subjective impressions) or not cultural enough (in the sense that financial actors ought to forgo the pretence of scientism and admit that they are guided, primarily, by convention and intuition). The actionable conclusions that stem from this approach usually boil down to the (palpable) need for better financial regulation and oversight to protect society from the sector’s excesses. … The second approach is much like the first: it suggests, with various degrees of outrage, that finance’s “cultural” dimensions render it unfit to wield the power and influence it today enjoys, and that, what is worse, the financial apparatus can essentially be reduced to an oligarchy of unfathomably wealthy individuals and institutions (served by functionaries), who adopt the accoutrements of economic rigour to cloak and justify the reproduction of their own power. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 576

Categorization

• SEED: A taxonomy of the two dominant critical framings (too cultural / not cultural enough; both yielding regulation-only fixes) could frame an essay on the limits of finance critique.