{"id":43313,"date":"2019-01-30T08:06:59","date_gmt":"2019-01-30T13:06:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43313"},"modified":"2019-01-30T08:07:01","modified_gmt":"2019-01-30T13:07:01","slug":"vampire-finance-sucks-the-lifeblood-out-of-the-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43313","title":{"rendered":"Vampire finance sucks the lifeblood out of the economy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.redpepper.org.uk\/vampire-finance-sucks-the-lifeblood-out-of-the-economy\/\">Vampire finance sucks the lifeblood out of the economy<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>We need democratic control of the financial sector. An interview with\u00a0Saskia Sassen<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.redpepper.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/15723852433_1f670507dd_b.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-25035\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The World Economic Forum. Photo by Studio Roosegaarde (Flickr)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Every year to coincide with the World Economic Forum, the Transnational Institute based in Amsterdam launches a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tni.org\/en\/collection\/state-of-power\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">State of Power<\/a>&nbsp;report to expose and deepen our understanding of the mechanisms that elites use to maintain power and concentrate wealth. For its&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/tni.org\/stateofpower2019\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">eighth edition<\/a>, the report has focused on the financial sector, asking why it has grown more powerful despite causing the financial crisis of 2008. The report features this interview with renowned sociologist&nbsp;Saskia&nbsp;Sassen who has written extensively on how finance has changed the nature of cities today and how its logic of extraction has fuelled new forms of expulsions and dispossession. The interview concludes with a discussion of fractures in the power of \u2018high finance\u2019 and how citizens\u2019 movements might take advantage to advance a democratic control of money.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>How powerful is finance today and from where does it derive its power?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">First, finance shouldn\u2019t be confused with traditional banking. We need banks \u2013 they sell money \u2013 whereas finance is a mode of extraction, just like mining: once value has been extracted they don\u2019t care what is done with it. A traditional bank wants its customers\u2019 children to be future clients, so it cares about relationships, but finance doesn\u2019t care at this personal level, except if they are very, very rich.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Second, finance is a dangerous sector because financiers have learnt how to financialise just about everything. And they do this not through traditional banking practices, but through algorithms and highly speculative manipulations. They have invented instruments to serve themselves rather than whoever they are advising. Which means they often don\u2019t lose even when their clients do.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vampire finance sucks the lifeblood out of the economy We need democratic control of the financial sector. An interview with\u00a0Saskia Sassen The World Economic Forum. Photo by Studio Roosegaarde (Flickr) Every year to coincide with the World Economic Forum, the Transnational Institute based in Amsterdam launches a&nbsp;State of Power&nbsp;report to expose and deepen our understanding [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1069,6070,5809,16940,24219,889],"class_list":["post-43313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-finance","tag-financial-sector","tag-financialisation","tag-red-pepper","tag-saskia-sassen","tag-world-economic-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43314,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43313\/revisions\/43314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}