Connections in Political Economy

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Name and Link	Type of Resource	Description

Gerald A. Epstein Introduction: Financialization and the World Economy - First chapter of the book listed below, Financialization and the World Economy This chapter is available here	Chapter in book see below	Extract: "We will cast the net widely and define financialization quite broadly: for us, financialization means the increasing role of financial motives, financial markets, financial actors and financial institutions in the operation of the domestic and international economies."
Gerald A. Epstein (Editor) Financialization and the World Economy Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd; illustrated edition edition (26 Aug 2005) Link to bookseller	Book	Reviews: "'We are all acutely aware of the increasing role in economic life of financial markets, institutions and operations and the pursuit of financial rewards, that is financialization. This book helps us to understand this dominant feature of neo-liberalism by examining the distributional implications, the effects of financialization on the US economy, international dimensions and monetary system, financial crises and policy responses. The breadth and depth of the analyses in this book will make it a most important contribution to the awareness of the problems raised by financialization and to the development of policy responses.' - Malcolm Sawyer, University of Leeds, UK 'This is a valuable collection of articles on financial globalisation from leading unorthodox economists. Edward Elgar are to be commended for bringing together these diverse writings in one volume. This will surely become a standard reference on the subject, even for those with orthodox perspectives.' - Ajit Singh, Professor of Economics, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge, UK 'One of the most important economic developments of the last quarter century has been the growth of the financial sector. In almost every country there has been a large increase in the share of profits that go to finance. This growth in the financial sector's profits has not been an accident; it is the result of conscious government policies. Remarkably, the economics profession has mostly viewed the growth of the financial sector as being of no special consequence, regarding its expansion as no different from growth in any other industry. This book takes an important step towards addressing this gap in research, examining the causes and consequences of an enlarged financial sector. The need for such work will become more evident as the world economy confronts more financial crises, like the stock market crash of 2000-2002.' - Dean Baker, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington, DC, US 'Financialization is a central and shaping feature of the world economy in the current period of liberalization of financial markets and trade. Financialization and the World Economy offers a series of expert, well-informed, critical studies of this phenomenon which explore its risks and costs. Readers who seek a balanced understanding of globalization will find this book an invaluable resource.' - Duncan Foley, Professor of Economics at the New School University, New York, US"
Interview with Gerald Epstein The Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) Available here	Interview
Thomas I. Palley Financialization: What It Is and Why It Matters The Levy Economics Institute Working Paper No. 525 December 2007 Available Here	Article	"ABSTRACT Financialization is a process whereby financial markets, financial institutions, and financial elites gain greater influence over economic policy and economic outcomes. Financialization transforms the functioning of economic systems at both the macro and micro levels. Its principal impacts are to (1) elevate the significance of the financial sector relative to the real sector, (2) transfer income from the real sector to the financial sector, and (3) increase income inequality and contribute to wage stagnation. Additionally, there are reasons to believe that financialization may put the economy at risk of debt deflation and prolonged recession........."
Robert Guttmann A Primer on Finance-Led Capitalism and Its Crisis Available here	Article	"This contribution to the debate on finance-led capitalism seeks to identify the principal structural changes in the nature of finance over the last couple of decades. After analyzing the dynamic of financial innovation, emphasis is put on the process of securitization as the engine of a new form of financial capital, fictitious capital, which encourages asset bubbles. The burst of the latest bubble, centered on the U.S. housing market, has triggered the most serious financial crisis in decades and a serious global downturn. The article ends with a discussion of likely implications of this systemic crisis."
Robin Blackburn, Finance and the Fourth Dimension New Left Review 39 May-June 2006 Available here	Article	"Financialization now runs the gamut from corporate strategy to personal finance. It permeates everyday life, with more products that arise from the increasing commodification of the life course, such as student debt or personal pensions, as well as with the marketing of credit cards or the arrangement of mortgages.......Financialization can most simply be defined as the growing and systemic power of finance and financial engineering. As such it is not an entirely novel phenomenon. But no account of contemporary capitalist development can ignore the scale of the financial sector’s recent expansion........"
John Bellamy Foster The Financialization of Capital and the Crisis Monthly Review 2007 58(11) 1-14 Available here	Article	EXTRACT: ".....What Paul Sweezy just over a decade ago called “the financialization of the capital accumulation process” has been the main force lifting economic growth since the 1970s.3 The transformation in the system that this has brought about is reflected in the rapid growth since the 1970s of financial profits as a percent of total profits (see chart 1). The fact that such financialization of capital appears to be taking the form of bigger and bigger bubbles that burst more frequently and with more devastating effect, threatening each time a deepening of stagnation—i.e., the condition, endemic to mature capitalism, of slow growth, and rising excess capacity and unemployment/underemployment—is thus a development of major significance......"
Michael Hudson Financial Capitalism v. Industrial Capitalism Contribution to The Other Canon Conference on Production Capitalism vs. Financial Capitalism Oslo, September 3-4, 1998 Available here	Article	""
Michael Hudson Why the Miracle of Compound Interest leads to Financial Crises Oslo conference, “Financial Crises in Capitalism”, Aug. 27, 2007 Available here	Article	""
Martin Wolf Unfettered finance is fast reshaping the global economy Financial Times June 18 2007 Available here but limited access without subscription	Newspaper article
Peter Gowan The Global Gamble: Washington's Faustian Bid for World Dominance Verso Books 1999 Link to bookseller Also similar content by this author in: Peter Gowan The Globalization Gamble: The Dollar-WallStreet Regime and its Consequences Available here	Book with some relevant chapters and online article
Hyman Minsky (1987), Securitization Preface and Afterword by L. Randall Wray Levy Economics Institute, Policy Note 2008/2 Available here	Article	"“At the annual banking structure and competition conference of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago in May 1987, the buzzword heard in the corridors and used by many of the speakers was ‘that which can be securitized, will be securitized.’” So notes Hyman Minsky in a prescient memo on the nature, and the implications, of securitization, written 20 years before an explosion in the securitization of home mortgages helped create the current financial crisis. This memo, which served as the basis for a lecture in Minsky’s monetary theory class at Washington University, has not been widely circulated. It is published here in its entirety, with a preface and an afterword by Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray that places Minsky’s work in context. "