Consequences of the New Wall Street System

[bigbadwolf]

Here is a good overview, by Peter Gowan, of developments during the last thirty years. I recommend it, though most of us here already know at least bits and pieces of it. A very brief excerpt:

The structure and dynamics of Wall Street banking changed dramatically in the quarter of a century after the mid-1980s. The main features of the new system include: (i) the rise of the lender-trader model; (ii) speculative arbitrage and asset-price bubble-blowing; (iii) the drive for maximizing leverage and balance-sheet expansion; (iv) the rise of the shadow banking system, with its London arm, and associated 'financial innovations'; (v) the salience of the money markets and their transformation into funders of speculative trading in asset bubbles; (vi) the new centrality of credit derivatives. These changes mutually re-enforced each other, forming an integrated and complex whole, which then disintegrated in the course of 2008. We will briefly examine each of them in turn.

 

[Stefan Zota]

Article is good in certain parts (especially analyzing causes for the current crisis).
However I don't like partisan articles. I don't like the idea of a "hidden persuasion". I want just facts and data not questionable interpretations. The article builds to the idea of public financial sector, but it fails to address limitations of such a model.
Every solution is a trade-off.

Here is the first link in google when typing 'Peter Gowan'
war and imperialism

 

[bigbadwolf]

Article is good in certain parts (especially analyzing causes for the current crisis).
However I don't like partisan articles. I don't like the idea of a "hidden persuasion". I want just facts and data not questionable interpretations. The article builds to the idea of public financial sector, but it fails to address limitations of such a model.
Every solution is a trade-off.

Here is the first link in google when typing 'Peter Gowan'
war and imperialism

The essay was published in New Left Review (to which, incidentally, I've been a subscriber for the better part of a decade); there is of course both a certain tacit world view and a concomitant theoretical focus which prevails in left intellectual circles. But I'm curious about what interpretation you found questionable.

 

[Stefan Zota]

The main thread of such articles is to take the following approach:
1. Show major financial problems
2. Relate them to a set of political decisions
3. Take the opposite view to the political decision
1 and 2 are fine in many cases, 3 is questionable or wrong. It's not black or white.
If a law was passed to remove a certain constraint and this lead to a negative impact that means it was a mistake. But it does not mean that adding back the constraint will fix the problem or move in the right direction.
There may be other ways to address a certain problem.

Some statements ...

American-style financial-system models are now grasped as being dangerous.

Who is grasping the the system as dangerous?
The sovereign funds that invested in Wall Street? Or maybe the countries that in the middle of the crisis bought dollars instead of yuan or yen?
What does dangerous really mean? If it means there is a degree of risk then yes it is.
Do you have more risk then a controlled financial sector? We cannot state it without in-depth analysis. Controlled systems collapsed just as well

EU’s guiding notion is that banking systems are secured by good rules rather than by authoritative states with tax-raising powers. This has been shown to be a dangerous joke.

Perhaps regulation loopholes allowed it. If a model as bad constraints, does that mean we need to replace the model, or re-evaluate the constraints?

Firstly, to raise the credibility of the Chinese model of a state-owned, bank-centred financial system. This is the serious alternative to the credit models of the Atlantic world.

What evidence do we have in favor of Chinese controlled economy?
Is the average Chinese citizen wealthier than average German, English or American?

 

[const451]

Here is the first link in google when typing 'Peter Gowan'
war and imperialism

That dude is a commy