Financial speculation externalizes its risks and costs onto the powerless

Evidence

More concerning still is the way that this system as a whole can be understood as a massive mechanism by which the actual costs and risks of speculative accumulation can be “externalized” onto those with little or no power to influence financial markets (LiPuma and Lee 2004, 69). For instance, the game-like trade in government bonds, or in commodities futures (corn, soybeans, wheat, oil), or in currencies, or in blue-chip corporate stocks can have horrific and devastating effects on whole populations who encounter massive economic volatility, debilitating price inflation (or deflation) and the loss of jobs. So, too, can we note the way that an increasingly detached and game-like culture of financial speculation drives an ever leaner and more austere brand of capitalism in which the financial sector accumulates massive disciplinary power over governments, corporations and smaller financial players, which is used to leverage competition, speculation, neoliberal austerity and ruthless profiteering into nearly every corner of the global capitalist economy. And we have seen the way in which all these human and economic costs are, ultimately, borne by those outside the financial services industry, including (dramatically) not only the way the public sector was compelled to bail out the financial sector in the wake of its spectacular collapse, but the way that it was prevented from imposing any meaningful or effective regulation on that sector in the aftermath, which has led to record-setting levels of profits for investment banks and other financial firms, as well as scandalous levels of executive compensation for their managers. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 332

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to deWaard’s argument that financialization’s discipline reaches into everyday life; also echoes the bailout-no-regulation asymmetry. — connects to: Current attention-organizing logics serve financial interests and are self-destructive. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 501; Individually rational risk-shifting trades become immoral and systemic-risk threats if widely practiced. — Donald MacKenzie & Yuval Millo, Constructing a Market, Performing Theory, 199; Financial markets punish redistributive leaders with currency speculation. — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 303 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Individual resistance is reabsorbed into speculation through personal debts and savings #complicates (0.80) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 544
• Fighting financialization requires wielding speculation on shifting ground #complicates (0.75) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 43