Amato / Fantacci The End of Finance

1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7456-8363-8
Verlag: John Wiley & Sons
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 300 Seiten, E-Book

This new book by two distinguished Italian economists is a highlyoriginal contribution to our understanding of the origins andaftermath of the financial crisis. The authors show that the recentfinancial crisis cannot be understood simply as a malfunctioning inthe subprime mortgage market: rather, it is rooted in a much morefundamental transformation, taking place over an extended timeperiod, in the very nature of finance.
The 'end' or purpose of finance is to be found in thesocial institutions by which the making and acceptance of promisesof payment are made possible - that is, the creation andcancellation of debt contracts within a specified time frame. Amatoand Fantacci argue that developments in the modern financial systemby which debts are securitized has endangered this fundamentalcredit/debt structure. The illusion has been created that debts areuniversally liquid in the sense that they need not be redeemed butcan be continually sold on in increasingly extensive globalmarkets. What appears to have reduced the riskiness of default forindividual agents has in fact increased the fragility of the systemas a whole.
The authors trace the origins of this profound transformationbackwards in time, not just to the neoliberal reforms of the 1980sand 90s but to the birth of capitalist finance in the mercantilenetworks of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This longhistorical perspective and deep analysis of the nature of financeenables the authors to tackle the challenges we face today in afresh way - not simply by tinkering with existing mechanisms, butrather by asking the more profound question of how institutionsmight be devised in which finance could fulfil its essentialfunctions.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Amato, Massimo

Fantacci, Luca

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction
Part One: Phenomenology
I. Do we know what the financial markets are?
II. At the root of the possibility of crisis: liquidity and risk
III. What is credit?
IV. What is money?
V. Finance starting from the end
VI. Capitalism and debt: a matter of life and death
Part Two: History
I. From credit risk to liquidity risk (2008)
II. The globalization of capital (1973)
III. 'Fiat dollar'. And the world saw that it was good(1971)
IV. The Eurodollar chimera (1958)
V. The European Payments Union (1950)
VI. Bretton Woods: the plan that might have made it (1944)
VII. Bretton Woods: the system that found implementation(1944)
VIII. The crisis paradigm (1929)
IX. Orchestra Rehearsal
X. Money before and after the gold standard (1717)
XI. The Bank of England and power currency (1694)
XII. The International Currency of the Trade Fairs (1579)
Part Three: Politics
I. Double or quits?
II. The way out of liquidity: the Gordian knot and utopia
III. Prevention or cure? The structural paradox of the anti-crisispolicies
IV. The other finance
V. The (rare) "green shoots" of a possible reform
VI. If not now, when?

Über Autor(innen)

MASSIMO AMATO is a Researcher in Economic History at theUniversità Bocconi in Milan.
LUCA FANTACCI is Assistant Professor at the UniversitàBocconi in Milan.