The global financial crisis of 2008 ushered in a system of informal
decision-making in the grey zone between economics and politics.
Legitimized by a rhetoric of emergency, ad hoc bodies have usurped
democratically elected governments. In line with the neoliberal credo,
the recent crisis has been used to realize the politically impossible
and to re-align executive power with the interests of the finance
industry.
In this important book, Joseph Vogl offers a much longer perspective on
these developments, showing how the dynamics of modern finance
capitalism have always rested on a complex and constantly evolving
relationship between private creditors and the state. Combining
historical and theoretical analysis, Vogl argues that over the last
three centuries, finance has become a "fourth estate," marked by the
systematic interconnection of treasury and finance, of political and
private economic interests.
Against this historical background, Vogl explores the latest phase in
the financialization of government, namely the dramatic transfer of
power from states to markets in the latter half of the 20th century.
From the liberalization of credit and capital markets to the
privatization of social security, he shows how policy has actively
enabled a restructuring of the economy around the financial sector.
Political systems are "imprisoned" by the regime of finance, while the
corporate model suffuses society, enclosing populations in the
production of financial capital.
The Ascendancy of Finance provides valuable and unsettling insight
into the genesis of modern power and where it truly resides.
