Financialization makes belief in value more central than ever

Evidence

In an age of financialization, when all of this commodification and agency occurs under the aegis of a system dominated by financial flows and speculations, the everyday production of value becomes more important than ever. In a world where our lives are increasingly determined by immaterial statistics in remote bank databases, where money – which has always been a mutually agreed upon illusion – has ceased to be tangible and entered the digital stratosphere, where the contradictions of the global system are readily apparent (countries like Greece, Iceland or Ireland can go from financial utopia to financial ruin in the blink of an eye with absolutely no “real” change to their underlying economy), the global economy is predicated on the shared belief of value as never before. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 400

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘shared belief of value’ claim connects to the reader’s work on how performance and performativity of value underpin finance — and to Saussurean/linguistic models of economic signification. — connects to: Financial assets are largely imaginary, yet imaginary does not mean unreal — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 29; Money carries multiple frames of value beyond its economic function — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 386; Financialization lets capital extract value from social life without destroying its creative source ecosystems — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 572 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Financialization colonizes culture by fusing economic price with social value #expands (0.82) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 561
• Market speculation functions as secular prophecy sustaining public faith in finance #expands (0.80) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 227
• Attention economy pits financialization against alternative forms of value #complicates (0.75)
• Financialization lets capital extract value from social life without destroying its creative source ecosystems #complicates (0.72) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 572