Financialization fragments corporate, state, and individual horizons into short-termism
Evidence
In the same way as the financial sector sees the devolution of value into fragmentary metaphorics, so, too, does the social and cultural realm witness increased fragmentation, meaninglessness and chaos. Corporate strategy, disciplined by stock markets and financial institutions, is increasingly guided by frantic short-term efforts to secure higher financial returns, rather than by any long-term concept of fiscal sustainability, let alone any commitment to workers or consumers. Government policy, guided by the influence of bond markets, eschews any pretence to long-term planning and seeks largely to manage potential risks to the future profitability of transnational capital. Even individuals, driven increasingly by the dictates of debt or lonely financial acumen in a “liquid” world without guarantees, have difficulty envisioning the future as anything more than the endless continuation of the present (see Žižek 2010). — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 138
Categorization
- XREF: Directly bridges to deWaard’s cultural argument: how finance remakes temporality and imagination at every scale. — connects to: Financialized valuation imposes short-termism and disconnects decisions from material production. — Ève Chiapello, Financialisation of Valuation, 41; Financial markets reshaped households, corporations, and states over the past 30 years. — Gerald F. Davis & Suntae Kim, Financialization of the Economy, 10; Bank consolidation and interlock collapse fractured American corporate elites’ political cohesion. — Gerald F. Davis & Suntae Kim, Financialization of the Economy, 107 (+11 more)
- SEED: Possible essay angle: ‘short-termism as the temporal grammar of financialized life’ — how stock and bond markets discipline everyone into the endless present.
Broader Connections
- Financialization is how society gets liquidated into marketable commodities
#corroborates(0.75) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 566