事實上，倫敦金融城的一些頭頭們似乎開始接受工黨政府可能比替代政府更可取的想法。“科爾賓和無協議脫歐一樣糟糕嗎？ 也許不再是了，”花旗銀行的克裏斯蒂安·舒爾茨 (Christian Schulz) 告訴《每日電訊報》。
當然，金融化不僅僅與銀行有關，因此解決這個問題的議程必須比金融部門的改革更加係統化。 取消學費和解決學生債務等政策無疑將有助於英國經濟去金融化。
然而，金融化的核心是金融部門（包括“影子銀行”），其大腦是國家維護的監管和法律規則體係，這些體係為金融主導經濟創造了條件。
除非金融化的心髒和大腦得到解決，否則切斷其四肢的嚐試可能會被證明是無效的。
本文將基於以下假設探討去金融化的策略：
a) 金融化，被理解為“金融動機、金融市場、金融參與者和金融機構”的主導地位，目前在全球經濟中占據主導地位；
b) 金融化與認真對待社會和環境正義的經濟發展方式不相容； 和
c) 下一場危機必然是金融化危機。
建立這個框架後，我們就可以著手解決戰略問題——“要做什麽？”的問題。
陣地戰還是機動戰？
可以確定去金融化文獻中的兩個主要思想流派，我將其稱為漸進主義和破裂主義策略。
漸進主義戰略試圖通過在宏觀和微觀層麵建立新機構的改革來蠶食金融化，這些機構可以隨著時間的推移發展成為商業銀行的替代品，同時引入監管變革，限製但不破壞金融在關鍵方麵的影響 經濟，例如住房和教育。
漸進主義政策方法包括基於國有投資銀行的雄心勃勃的公共基礎設施投資計劃，支持建立工人合作社以及旨在限製金融征用和租金提取的土地和住房政策，包括給予英格蘭銀行職權 以抑製房價上漲。
經濟學家、影子財政大臣約翰·麥克唐納 (John McDonnell) 的前顧問詹姆斯·米德威 (James Meadway) 提倡一種漸進主義戰略，認為“要轉變金融，我們需要一個類似於拆除炸彈的緩慢、有條不紊的過程——而不是進一步爆炸。”
他繼續說道：“這將意味著對我們的經濟進行‘結構性改革’——建立新的機構來提供投資，例如區域開發銀行；改變生產性資產的所有權和控製權，例如通過包容性所有權基金”。
在 2014 年 IPPR 智囊團專門針對去金融化的論文中，馬修勞倫斯也提倡基於對可能的變化速度保持類似沉默的結構性改革，認為“大膽的意圖必須......與認識到相匹配 變革將通過艱苦的努力實現……逆轉金融化將不是一件容易或迅速的事情”。
勞倫斯的提議確實與金融部門具體相關，主張英格蘭銀行在監督和指導信貸創造方麵的新任務，新的監管機構，包括金融產品委員會，以評估新的金融產品和英國未來基金，該基金將掠奪收益 金融部門建立最終將成為 1000 億英鎊的主權財富基金，用於長期、可持續的公共投資。
破裂主義戰略認為，漸進式改革永遠不會在圍繞金融部門利益設計的體係中取得進展。 即使漸進式變革確實取得了進展，除非金融的權力基礎被剝奪，否則改革很可能會在未來再次被推翻。 相反，破裂主義者提倡對金融部門進行全麵攻勢。 政策方法包括銀行業國有化、債務減記/注銷和資本/信貸控製。
SOAS 經濟學家、《Profiting Without Producing》一書的作者科斯塔斯·拉帕維薩斯 (Costas Lapavitsas) 是破裂主義戰略的倡導者，他認為“沒有明確的監管變革路徑來應對金融化”。
根據 Lapavitsas 的說法，“如果有必要對金融采取更多的幹預主義態度，而不僅僅是建立監管框架，那麽應該直接考慮金融機構的產權......將金融作為一個係統來控製將會獲得不同的膚色，如果 係統地重新引入了公有製和對銀行的控製權。”
根據 Lapavitsas 的說法，“如果有必要對金融采取更多的幹預主義態度，而不僅僅是建立監管框架，那麽應該直接考慮金融機構的產權......將金融作為一個係統來控製將會獲得不同的膚色，如果 係統地重新引入了公有製和對銀行的控製權。”
他繼續說道：“原則上，公開管理流向家庭和非金融企業的信貸以實現社會既定目標並消除金融征用沒有內在困難。”
金斯頓大學經濟學家史蒂夫·基恩 (Steve Keen) 在“我們能否避免另一場金融危機？”中以不同的方式指出，解決金融化問題的“政府間接行動”很可能無法將私人債務降至 GDP 水平，並以日本為例 自 1990 年代初開始長達四分之一個多世紀的長期停滯以來，幾乎每年公共支出占 GDP 的比重都在增加，但私人債務水平仍停留在 GDP 的 165% 左右（與英國相似）。
基恩寫道：“如果市場或間接政府行動都不可能充分減少私人債務，那麽唯一的選擇要麽是直接減少私人債務，要麽是增加貨幣供應以間接減輕債務負擔。”
Keen 提出將私人債務水平降至 GDP 的 100% 以下以確保金融穩定的理由，並主張注銷債務和/或一種他稱之為“現代債務禧年”的直升機撒錢形式。 當局將在此處“將資金直接注入所有私人銀行賬戶，但要求其首先用於償還債務”。
雖然漸進主義和破裂主義的方法有真正和重要的區別，但從政治戰略的角度來看，它們在根本上並不矛盾。 如果我們將政治理解為“可能性的藝術”，其中時間為王，則漸進式和中斷式方法都各有其用。 關鍵是要理解金融主導的增長和危機的明斯基周期，以及政治戰略必須如何適應危機的具體階段。
在金融主導的增長時期，漸進式改革可以幫助盡可能地在“靠財富生活的人和靠工作生活的人”之間重新平衡權力，正如經濟學家格蕾絲布萊克利所說，理解政治條件 因為金融化的致命一擊尚不存在。
除了上述提出的一些漸進式改革外，政府還應支持出現抵製金融資本的有機形式，包括債務人工會、租戶工會和更強大的工作場所組織。 它還應該利用財政和貨幣政策，使工資通脹始終高於資產通脹，隨著時間的推移侵蝕債務價值。
這一時期的另一個關鍵作用是建立一個去金融化的選舉聯盟，通過為相當多樣化的人口統計數據提供明確的激勵措施並在去金融化的英國中占有一席之地，類似於撒切爾的住房改革如何為托利黨建立新的人口結構 政治。
當金融體係不可避免地崩潰時，“反向撒切爾主義”可以為即將到來的關鍵戰役打下基礎。 John McDonnell 提出的私人租戶購買權政策的提議是反向撒切爾主義的一個例子，可以通過區域投資銀行來協調，以削減銀行業，並為那些有興趣的人提供額外的激勵。 願意與他們所在街區的其他以前的私人租戶一起組成合作住房實體。
在金融危機時期，政治環境會發生翻天覆地的變化。 漸進主義方法不僅有局限性——它對金融化的捍衛者也很有用，隻要國家采取行動保護他們的切身利益，他們就會很樂意在短期內讓步。 國家行動在危機期間變得不可避免：唯一的問題是它采取什麽形式； 國家是否采取行動支持該係統或解構它。 在這一刻，破裂主義戰略對於解決危機和作為建立新經濟秩序的橋梁變得至關重要。
我們可以通過（誤）使用葛蘭西陣地戰和機動戰的戰略二分法來理解這種雙重戰略方法。 陣地戰被理解為影響力之爭； 而機動戰是爭奪控製權。
因此，陣地戰與債務推動的增長階段有關，機動戰與增長周期不可避免地崩潰的時刻有關。 危機階段將是本文其餘部分的重點。
危機應對策略：拆除炸彈，還是對惡性疾病進行手術？
了解 2008 年崩潰的“第一響應者”的心理至關重要，根據亞當·圖茲 (Adam Tooze) 在他關於大蕭條的不朽曆史“崩潰”中的說法，這就是美國響應的關鍵人物如何看待自己 :
“這些比喻……將危機應對團隊定位為麵臨迫在眉睫的緊急情況的第一響應者。 他們把我們，他們的聽眾，放在他們身邊。 誰不會支持試圖將家庭汽車停在橋上的父親般的本·伯南克，或者 [蒂莫西] 蓋特納的英勇拆彈小組？ 當我們焦急地看著我們的英雄努力將我們從災難中拯救出來時，政治被擱置一旁。 沒有時間問為什麽會這樣。 我們榮辱與共'。 但正是從這一斷言開始，危機的政治經濟學開始了。 2008 年秋天需要挽救的是哪個係統？誰受到了傷害？ 誰被包括在需要保護的人的圈子裏？ 誰不是？
Tooze 表示，這種危機應對措施“擺脫了”導致危機的金融化結構性問題，以便“絕對優先考慮拯救金融體係”，這“影響了隨後的一切”。
在 2008 年金融危機席卷世界經濟時，經合組織發表了一篇關於危機應對策略的論文，正是急救人員的心理為他們提供了信息。 Blundell-Wignall、Atkinson 和 Se-Hoon 總結道：“過去償付能力危機的基本教訓是，始終需要三個步驟：
1. 在危機期間為所有相關存款投保，以防止銀行擠兌。
2. 從銀行資產負債表中剔除“不良資產”。
3. 對資產清理後的銀行進行資本重組。
作者發現，在清理“不良資產”方麵，國家始終是關鍵，而不是市場機製。 為什麽？
“原因是因為隻有公共部門才能發行無風險資產，並在危機中將其換成風險資產，這在流動性受阻、不確定性普遍存在以及養老金等自然持有人罷工的情況下至關重要 基金、共同基金、保險公司、主權財富基金等。”
經合組織承認，私營部門參與者無力解決自己造成的危機，而且金融部門不良資產的係統性風險太大，無法讓他們碰壁。 但是，在國家以虧損為基礎進行幹預以清理銀行的不良資產之後會發生什麽？
“很久以後，在退出策略階段，可以出售公共部門資產：逐漸將它們從公共資產負債表中移除，交給更多的自然持有者，如養老基金、主權財富基金、保險公司和其他投資者。 根據資產的定價以及流程的處理方式，納稅人最終可以從救助計劃的成本中彌補部分損失。”
這就是救助經濟學——社會主義為富人服務、資本主義為窮人服務的縮影。 公共部門從銀行吸收不良資產，然後在這些資產再次成為有吸引力的資產時，以虧本的方式將其出售給私人投資者。 政府的債務水平更高，銀行的資產負債表更健康，私人投資者的資產以低價收購。 與此同時，“不良資產”等式的另一端——家庭和企業——得不到救助，失去家園或不得不關閉企業。
民族國家在 2008 年以不同的方式和不同的速度采取了廣泛的做法。在一些國家，國家將銀行資產國有化或部分國有化，在其他國家，資產被拍賣給投資者——但幾乎總是為了 以捍衛和維護金融化的方式擺脫危機。
去金融化危機應對必須具有蓋特納和伯南克隱喻的緊迫性，而不是被視為來自外部威脅的緊急情況，如爆炸裝置，它必須被描述為已經達到緊急情況的內生發展 ，例如導致心髒驟停且現在需要手術的惡性疾病，或者吸毒過量且需要重大幹預的癮君子。
這樣，危機應對就與長期戰略聯係起來：手術為醫生進行化療和其他治療來修複患者鋪平了道路； 拯救吸毒者需要緊急治療，然後是長期的康複計劃，從根本上改變這個人的生活方式。
這在政策方麵的廣泛含義是什麽？ 下表從概念上區分了經合組織提出的危機應對策略和左翼追求的去金融化議程。
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正如經合組織概述了其危機應對戰略的三個階段或步驟，左翼戰略也必須按以下方式分階段進行：
a) 解決中短期危機； 和
b) 決定性地轉向長期去金融化計劃。
沒有足夠的空間來徹底討論這種方法的詳細政策影響（無論如何需要進一步的研究和政策製定），但去金融化危機應對戰略所需的步驟可能如下所示：
第 1 步：係統地國有化，而不是逐案國有化。 從對整個英國經濟構成係統性風險的機構開始，目標應該是最終將所有信貸創造納入公共控製。 這是危機應對和去金融化之間的關鍵聯係——通過將信貸創造納入公有製，可以控製經濟投資的速度和方向。
第 2 步：確保對金融部門的信心。 保證所有存款。 必要時注入流動性。
第 3 步：引入資本管製。 防止資本流出該國對於控製金融市場至關重要。
第 4 步：對信貸組合進行係統評估，包括一項重大債務減記和注銷計劃，以減少私人債務對 GDP 的負擔。 保證不會因違約而收回房屋或商業財產。 探索出售一些外國資產以減少國際風險的可能性。
第 5 步：根據新的社會目標標準重新設計財務。 重寫法規以消除對衝基金和私募股權公司的金融沒收； 轉變養老基金投資標準並建立透明的會計慣例； 編寫新的稅法以防止避稅； 改革公司法中的“股東價值”； ETC。
第六步：為了大多數人的利益解決危機。 確保充分就業的巨額財政刺激； 改善以前大量金融化的普遍服務（例如教育、公共交通、住房）以降低生活成本的計劃。
去金融化的障礙
上述去金融化危機應對策略將麵臨巨大障礙。
在經濟意義上，最重要的挑戰將是國際金融市場對英國匯率施加的壓力。 這對國內銀行業的外債負債來說尤其具有挑戰性； 具體來說，獲得美元流動性。 美聯儲在 2008 年金融危機期間作為“全球最後貸款人”的角色在當時鮮為人知，但後來發現它發揮了絕對的作用，“改變了我們想象中的金融體係與金融體係之間的關係” 國家貨幣”，根據 Tooze 的說法。
正如托尼·諾菲爾德 (Tony Norfield) 在《城市》(The City) 中展示的那樣，英國擁有獨一無二的國際化金融部門。 英國的金融服務出口額占 GDP 的 2% 到 3%，是美國的五六倍，是迄今為止所有主要經濟體中對其他國家的貸款和存款總額最大的國家，總額巨大 英國銀行業的 16.7%。 這還不包括全球範圍內英國控製的一係列避稅天堂。 因此，這帶來的主要挑戰之一是如何處理在英國經營且擁有大量英國資產的外資銀行。
從政治上講，上述策略將對英國金融精英構成生死存亡的威脅，他們將動用所有巨大的遊說力量來阻止它。 如果金融部門本身被阻止，那麽金融化的受益者就會形成一個更廣泛的聯盟——私募股權公司、養老基金經理、土地所有者、地主、財產所有者——他們可以結成一個集團，目的是解除任何去武裝化的武裝。 金融化議程。
從製度上講，要讓國家以我們上麵描述的方式應對危機將麵臨巨大挑戰，無論是在公務員隊伍中國家常任代表與金融精英之間的密切關係方麵，還是在術語方麵。 國家行為者在領導實現去金融化所需的那種行動方麵缺乏經驗。
但財政部並不關心金融部門和政府之間的旋轉門，而是在 2012 年發布的危機應對審查中辯稱，“與其他機構進行更高程度的員工交流”會有所幫助，盡管注意到該組織的 高流動率部分是由於“官員在財政部短期借調或借調後返回其他組織”。 這是對左派將麵臨的製度挑戰深度的一瞥。
如果財政部的製度文化存在問題，那麽中央銀行的製度獨立性可能是致命的。 此處概述的戰略將要求英格蘭銀行與財政部緊密合作，願意對銀行業擁有前所未有的權力，並以與其目前職權範圍背道而馳的方式行使這種權力。 英格蘭銀行的授權來自財政部，但對銀行的日常控製不受政府影響。 英格蘭銀行存在的理由首先是保護金融部門。 目前尚不清楚其職權範圍的變化是否足以提供去金融化危機應對策略——央行獨立性這個棘手的問題可能不得不直麵。
根據當時英國與歐盟的關係，國內層麵也可能存在製度性挑戰，歐盟層麵禁止控製資本的規則可能會成為障礙。
從法律上講，由於嚴格的英國財產法，如果該部門全部國有化而不是逐家銀行國有化，這裏的所有權提案可能會受到挑戰，並且可能會受到歐洲人權公約的挑戰。 債務重組也有可能在合法財產基礎上受到挑戰。
在非危機時期，這些障礙的組合可能會使對金融部門所有者的全麵正麵攻擊過於危險，以至於左翼政府無法進行。 但金融的弱點是它的高風險維度，這意味著它需要國家打破治理規範以在危機時期保護它。
金融主導增長的邏輯中存在不穩定性。 在反對銀行的群眾運動失去整個社會霸權的政治環境中，政府可以處於這樣一種境地，去金融化危機應對戰略的障礙突然看起來不像維護地位那樣令人生畏 現狀。
去金融化案例研究：冰島
試圖最終回答上述所有障礙不在本文的範圍內——在這方麵需要進一步的研究和政策製定。 除了提出問題和建議可能的答案之外，我們還可以看看 2008 年崩盤中為數不多的例子之一，它至少部分反駁了悲觀觀點，即除了救助經濟學別無選擇。
Björn Rúnar Guðmundsson 在他對冰島金融化和金融危機的研究中指出，冰島以“一係列常規和非常規政策行動”應對 2008 年的崩潰，導致“一定程度的去金融化”。
一項緊急法案將三大銀行拆分為一家負責國內業務的新銀行和一家負責國際業務的“老”銀行。 政府還承諾為所有銀行存款提供擔保。 然後，引入了資本管製，這意味著“禁止所有資本項目交易，以防止金融資產退出，其中大部分由外國投資者持有”。 資本管製最終持續到 2017 年，“阻礙了金融部門的整體複蘇”。
這兩項政策是銀行業投資組合和活動轉型的基礎。 所有轉移到新銀行的貸款都“按公允價值”重新估值。 銀行的關注點變成了“債務重組和資產負債表修複”，而“外匯市場、股票市場和債券市場的市場成交量大幅下降”。
其結果是在整個經濟領域，尤其是在商業領域，實現了深刻的去杠杆化。 由於係統性的“減記和注銷”，公司債務占 GDP 的比例從崩盤前的 300% 以上下降到 2014 年的 80% 以下。 家庭債務下降得更慢，但到 2014 年已降至 2005 年的水平。
事實證明，清理銀行資產負債表是非常成功的，即使對於那些“向上重估其投資組合並相應地報告利潤”的銀行也是如此。 Guðmundsson 發現，通過這種方式，“最初受損的貸款組合在危機後的表現超出了預期。”
結果是冰島的經濟發展模式發生了根本性的變化，“從金融主導型增長轉向越來越多的出口主導型增長”。 危機期間克朗在國際上的貶值為出口導向型複蘇奠定了基礎，該國在 2014 年出現了十多年來的首次經常賬戶盈餘。 經常賬戶赤字在 2006 年達到頂峰，占 GDP 的 23%。
遵守歐洲經濟區 (EEA) 規則的國際政治壓力和國內金融政治力量的重新確立導致資本管製在 2017 年結束。隨著外債和國際資本流動才慢慢開始重新 -斷言，現在說新自由主義模式是否回歸還為時過早，但這確實凸顯了冰島部分去金融化的局限性。
雖然冰島銀行業進行了重組，但其用途並未得到充分調整，短期盈利能力仍然是主要驅動力。 盡管如此，冰島證明，盡管去金融化的障礙非常巨大，但並非不可逾越，尤其是在金融化危機的深度很深的情況下。
結論
一個我們永遠不知道答案的有趣的思想實驗如下：如果 Jeremy Corbyn 和 John McDonnell 在 2008 年的崩潰中負責，而不是 Gordon Brown 和 Alistair Darling，事情會不會有什麽不同？
麥克唐納當然一直在考慮這個問題。 Richard Barbrook 是病毒式大選遊戲“Corbyn Run”背後的“class wargames”組織的創始人，他一直在為影子財政大臣的團隊提供有關工黨政府危機的戰爭遊戲的建議。
PoliticsHome 報道稱：“英鎊擠兌、投資者外流以及類似 2008 年襲擊全球經濟的金融危機是該團隊將嚐試應對的情景類型。”
很明顯，對於社會主義者應該如何在新自由主義經濟中利用政府權力，麥克唐納尤其深思熟慮，他知道他不一定會有很多有機盟友。 在英國工業的大部分領域，沒有工人運動可言，在整個西方世界，幾乎沒有當權的社會主義者可以充當國際盟友。 他甚至不能依靠自己的後座議員。
麥克唐納的想法似乎是，在這種情況下，生存將是當務之急。 不被財力逼下台，本身就是一種成就。 考慮到這一點，這位影子財政大臣可能會對金融部門越來越容易接受科爾賓領導的工黨政府的想法感到滿意。
但是，正如未來主義作家阿爾文·托夫勒所說，“如果你沒有戰略，你就是別人戰略的一部分”。 雖然工黨覺得紐約市已被消除為對該黨選舉前景的政治威脅可能會感到欣慰，但財政部門也將尋求製服科爾賓和麥克唐納可能威脅其權力的任何激進改革。
在金融化時代，如果左翼政府不向金融勢力發起進攻，它真的能指望未來某個時候不付出代價嗎？ 此外，在危機重重的金融體係中，金融化的主要矛盾真的能像 2008 年那樣被工黨政府置之不理嗎？ 工黨政府能否現實地麵對我們時代的緊迫挑戰——包括但不限於氣候崩潰、不平等和貧困、人口危機和自動化——同時讓金融繼續為英國經濟提供支持？
這些問題都沒有簡單的答案，但回避它們隻會讓問題越積越多。 “要做什麽？”關於金融的問題需要緊急關注。
De-financialising the economy: what is to be done?
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/de-financialising-economy-what-be-done/
Tackling the power of finance head on is essential if we are to address the urgent challenges of our time. But it won't be easy.
Image: Matt Crossick/PA Archive/PA Images
This essay is part of ourEconomy's 'Preparing for the next crisis' series.
The Labour Party’s 2019 annual conference was a cornucopia of radical policy announcements, as the party prepares to fight an imminent general election. But one area where the conference was noticeably quiet was the centre of Britain’s financialisation regime: the banking sector.
Proposals for re-purposing majority-state owned RBS remain on the table, but there is little by way of concrete reform plans – regulatory or otherwise – for challenging the power of private finance as a whole. The recent establishment of a “City Surgery” indicates a growing desire to reassure banks about the party’s plans in office.
Indeed, some head honchos in the City of London appear to be coming round to the idea that a Labour government may be preferable to the alternative.
“Is Corbyn as bad as no-deal? Perhaps no longer,” Christian Schulz, at Citi bank, told The Telegraph.
Of course, financialisation is not simply about the banks, and thus an agenda to tackle it has to be much more systematic than reform of the financial sector. Policies such as scrapping tuition fees and tackling student debt would undoubtedly contribute to de-financialising the UK economy.
However, the beating heart of financialisation is the financial sector (including ‘shadow banking’), and its brain is the system of regulatory and legal rules upheld by the state which re-produce the conditions for finance to dominate the economy.
Unless the heart and brain of financialisation is tackled, attempts to cut off its limbs will likely prove ineffective.
This essay will explore strategies for de-financialisation, based on the following assumptions:
a) Financialisation, understood as the dominance of “financial motives, financial markets, financial actors and financial institutions”, is currently hegemonic in the global economy;
b) Financialisation is incompatible with an approach to economic development which takes social and environmental justice seriously; and
c) The next crisis will invariably be a crisis of financialisation.
With this framework established, we can proceed to address the question of strategy – the ‘what is to be done?’ question.
War of position, or war of manoeuvre?
Two main strands of thought within de-financialisation literature can be identified, which I will call incrementalist and rupturalist strategies.
The incrementalist strategy seeks to eat away at financialisation through reforms which build new institutions at the macro and micro level which can over-time develop into an alternative to the commercial banks, while introducing regulatory changes which limit, without breaking, finance’s reach into key aspects of the economy, such as housing and education.
Incrementalist policy approaches include an ambitious public infrastructure investment plan based on state-owned investment banks, supporting the establishment of worker co-operatives and policies on land and housing which seek to restrict financial expropriation and rental extraction, including giving the Bank of England a remit to restrict house price inflation.
James Meadway, economist and former advisor to shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, has advocated an incrementalist strategy, arguing that “to transform finance, we need a slow, methodical process akin to defusing a bomb — not a further explosion.”
He goes on: "It will mean ‘structural reforms’ to our economy — building new institutions to deliver investment, like the regional development banks; changing the ownership and control of productive assets, for example through the Inclusive Ownership Funds”.
In a paper specifically on de-financialisation for the IPPR think-tank in 2014, Mathew Lawrence also advocated structural reforms based on a similar reticence about the speed of change which was possible, arguing “boldness of intent must…be matched with a recognition that change will be painstakingly achieved…Reversing financialisation will not be an easy or swift endeavour”.
Lawrence’s proposals do pertain to the financial sector specifically, arguing for a new Bank of England mandate on monitoring and guiding credit creation, new regulatory institutions including a Financial Product Board to assess new financial products and a British Future Fund which would skim off the proceeds of the financial sector to build up to what eventually would be a £100 billion sovereign wealth fund for long-term, sustainable public investments.
The rupturalist strategy argues that incremental reforms will never make headway against a system that has been designed around the interests of the financial sector. Even if incremental changes did make progress, unless finance’s base of power is taken away from it, reforms are likely to be over-turned again further down the line. The rupturalists instead advocate a full-frontal offensive on the financial sector. Policy approaches include nationalisation of the banking sector, debt write-downs/write off’s and capital/credit controls.
Costas Lapavitsas, SOAS economist and author of ‘Profiting Without Producing’, is an advocate of a rupturalist strategy, arguing that “there are no clear paths of regulatory change to confront financialisation”.
According to Lapavitsas, “If it is necessary to adopt a more interventionist attitude toward finance than merely setting a regulatory framework, then property rights over financial institutions ought to be considered directly... Controlling finance as a system would acquire a different complexion, if public ownership and control over banks were re-introduced systematically.”
He goes on: “In principle, there would be no intrinsic difficulty in publicly managing the flow of credit to households and non-financial enterprises to achieve socially set objectives as well as to eliminate financial expropriation.”
In a different way, Kingston University economist Steve Keen argues in ‘Can we avoid another financial crisis?’ that “indirect government action” to address financialisation is likely to fail to bring down private debt to GDP levels, citing the example of Japan where there has been an increase in public spending to GDP for almost every year since it’s more than quarter of a century long stagnation began in the early 1990’s, but private debt levels remain stuck at around 165 per cent of GDP (similar to the UK’s).
“If neither market nor indirect government action is likely to reduce private debt sufficiently, the only options are either a direct reduction of private debt, or an increase in the money supply that indirectly reduces the debt burden,” Keen writes.
Keen makes the case for private debt levels to be reduced to significantly below 100 per cent of GDP to ensure financial stability, and argues for debt-write off’s and/or a form of helicopter money which he calls a ‘modern debt jubilee’. This is where authorities would make “a direct injection of money into all private bank accounts, but require that its first use is to pay down debt”.
While incrementalist and rupturalist approaches have genuine and important differences, in political strategy terms they do not be fundamentally at odds with one another. If we understand politics as the ‘art of the possible’, where timing is king, both incremental and ruptural approaches have their place. The key is to understand the Minskyite cycle of finance-led growth and crisis, and how a political strategy must adapt itself to the specific phases of that crisis.
At times of finance-led growth, incremental reforms can help to re-balance power as far as possible between “those who live off wealth and those who live off work”, as economist Grace Blakeley puts it, with the understanding that the political conditions for a knock-out blow of financialisation do not yet exist.
As well as some of the incremental reforms proposed above, government should support the emergence of organic forms of resistance to finance capital, including debtors unions, tenants unions and stronger workplace organisation. It should also utilise fiscal and monetary policy in such a way that wage inflation is always higher than that of assets, eroding the value of debts over time.
Another key role in this period is to build an electoral coalition for de-financialisation, by providing quite diverse demographics with clear incentives and a stake in a de-financialised Britain, in a similar way to how Thatcher’s housing reforms built a new demographic for Tory politics.
A ‘reverse Thatcherism’ can act to prepare the ground for the key battles to come when the financial system inevitably implodes. The proposal for a right-to-buy policy for private tenants, floated by John McDonnell, is one example of reverse Thatcherism, which could be co-ordinated through regional investment banks to cut out the banking sector, with additional incentives for those who are willing to club together with other formerly private tenants in their block to form co-operative housing entities.
At times of financial crisis, the political conditions alter utterly. An incrementalist approach is not only limited – it is also useful for the defenders of financialisation, who become quite happy to concede some ground in the short-term, as long as the state acts to protect their vital interests. State action becomes inevitable during a crisis: the only question is what form it takes; whether the state acts to prop up that system or de-construct it. In this moment, a rupturalist strategy becomes essential in both resolving the crisis, and as a bridge to establishing a new economic order.
We can understand this dual strategic approach by (mis)using the Gramscian strategic dichotomy of war of position and war of manoeuvre. The war of position is understood as the struggle for influence; whereas the war of manoeuvre is the struggle for control.
The war of position therefore pertains to the phase of debt-fuelled growth, and the war of manoeuvre to the moment when that growth cycle inevitably crashes. It is the crisis phase that will be the focus of the rest of this essay.
Crisis response strategies: unpicking a bomb, or performing surgery on a malignant disease?
It is vital to understand the psychology which informed the “first responders” of the 2008 crash, which is how the key figures of the United States’ response thought of themselves according to Adam Tooze in his monumental history of the Great Recession, ‘Crashed’:
“The metaphors…position the crisis-fighting team as first responders facing a compelling emergency. And they place us, their audience, by their side. Who would not root for the fatherly Ben Bernanke trying to keep the family car on the bridge, or [Timothy] Geithner’s heroic bomb disposal team? Politics is set aside as we anxiously watch our heroes struggle to rescue us from disaster. There is no time to ask why this happening. We are 'all in this together'. But it is precisely with that assertion that a political economy of the crisis begins. Which system was it that needed to be saved in the autumn of 2008. Who was being hurt? Who was included in the circle of those who needed to be protected? And who was not?”
This crisis response took “off the table” the structural problems of financialisation which brought the crisis to being, in order to “give absolute priority to saving the financial system” which “shaped everything else that followed”, according to Tooze.
It was the psychology of first responders that informed an OECD paper on crisis response strategies published as the 2008 financial crash was ripping through the world economy. Blundell-Wignall, Atkinson and Se-Hoon concluded that: “The basic lesson of the past solvency crises is that three steps are always required:
1. Insure all relevant deposits during the crisis to prevent runs on banks.
2. Remove the ‘bad assets’ from the balance sheet of banks.
3. Recapitalise the asset-cleansed banks.”
The state is always crucial in clearing out ‘bad assets’, rather than market mechanisms, the authors found. Why?
“The reason is because only the public sector can issue risk-free assets and exchange them for risky assets in a crisis, which is critical when liquidity is jammed and there is widespread uncertainty and a buyers strike on the part of natural holders such as pension funds, mutual funds, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds and the like.”
The OECD accepts that private sector actors are incapable of resolving a crisis of their own making, and that the systemic risk of the financial sector’s bad assets is too great to allow them to go to the wall. But what then happens after the state intervenes on a loss-making basis to cleanse banks of their bad assets?
“Much later, in the exit strategy phase, the public sector assets can be sold: gradually removing them from the public balance sheet towards more natural holders such as pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies and other investors. Depending on the pricing of assets, and how the process is handled, the taxpayer could eventually recoup some of the losses from the costs of the rescue packages.”
This is bailout economics – the epitome of socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor. The public sector takes on bad assets from banks and then sells them to private investors at a loss to the public purse when they become attractive assets again. The government is then left with a higher level of debt, the banks are left with a healthier balance sheet, and private investors are left with assets acquired on the cheap. Meanwhile, those on the other side of the ‘bad assets’ equation – households and businesses – receive no bailout, and lose their home or have to wind up their enterprise.
In different ways and at different speeds, this was broadly the approach that nation-states pursued in 2008. In some countries the state nationalised or part-nationalised bank assets, in others assets were auctioned off to investors – but almost always with the aim of exiting the crisis in such a way as to defend and uphold financialisation.
A de-financialisation crisis response must have the urgency of Geithner and Bernanke’s metaphors, but rather than being considered as an emergency from an exogenous threat, like an explosive device, it must be depicted as an endogenous development which has reached the point of an emergency, like a malignant disease which has caused a cardiac arrest and now requires surgery, or an addict who has over-dosed and needs a major intervention.
In this way, the crisis response is connected to the long-term strategy: surgery paves the way for the doctor to conduct chemotherapy and other treatments to fix the patient; saving the addict requires emergency treatment followed by a long-term recuperation plan which fundamentally changes the person’s way of life.
What does this mean broadly in policy terms? The following table conceptually separates out crisis response strategies between that proposed by the OECD and that of a de-financialisation agenda pursued by the left.
Just as the OECD outline three phases, or steps, to their crisis response strategy, the left’s strategy must also be phased in a way which:
a) Resolves the crisis in the short to medium term; and
b) Makes a decisive shift towards the long-term de-financialisation plan.
There is insufficient space to thoroughly debate the detailed policy implications of such an approach (which in any case requires further research and policy development), but the steps which are required for a de-financialisation crisis response strategy may look like the following:
Step 1: Nationalise systematically, not on a case-by-case basis. Starting with the institutions where the risk to the UK economy as a whole is systemic, the aim should be to eventually bring all credit creation into public control. This is the key link between crisis response and de-financialisation – by taking credit creation into public ownership, the rate and direction of investment in the economy can be controlled.
Step 2: Ensure confidence in the financial sector. Guarantee all deposits. Inject liquidity where necessary.
Step 3: Introduce capital controls. Preventing capital flows out of the country will be essential in keeping financial markets in check.
Step 4: Implement a systematic evaluation of the credit portfolio, including a plan for a major debt write-down’s and write-off’s to reduce the private debt to GDP burden. Guarantee no repossession of homes or business properties from defaults. Explore the potential for a sale of some foreign assets to reduce international exposure.
Step 5: Re-design finance with new social purpose criteria. Re-write regulations to eliminate financial expropriation from hedge funds and private equity firms; transform pension fund investment criteria and create transparent accounting practices; write a new tax code to prevent avoidance; reform ‘shareholder value’ in company law; etc.
Step 6: Resolve the crisis in the interests of the majority. A huge fiscal stimulus to ensure full employment; plans for improving provision of universal services that were previously heavily financialised (e.g. education, public transport, housing) to reduce the cost of living.
The barriers to de-financialisation
The de-financialisation crisis response strategy outlined above would face formidable barriers.
In an economic sense, the most important challenge would be the pressure placed on the UK’s exchange rate by international financial markets. This will be particularly challenging in relation to the domestic banking sector’s foreign debt liabilities; specifically, access to dollar liquidity. The role of the Federal Reserve as “global lender of last resort” during the 2008 crash was barely known about at the time, but has since been revealed to have been absolutely instrumental, “transforming what we imagine to be the relationship between financial systems and national currencies”, according to Tooze.
Britain has a financial sector which is uniquely internationalised, as Tony Norfield shows in ‘The City’. UK financial services exports are worth 2 to 3% of GDP, a figure five or six times higher than for the US, and it has by far the largest total loans to, and deposits from, other countries of any major economy, totalling a massive 16.7% of UK banking. And that’s not including the string of UK controlled tax havens around the globe. One of the key challenges this presents is therefore how to deal with foreign-owned banks operating in the UK with substantial UK-based assets.
Politically, the strategy outlined above would be an existential threat to UK financial elites, who would muster all of their enormous lobbying power to stop it. If the financial sector itself is held off, there is then a broader coalition of benefactors from financialisation – private equity firms, pension fund managers, landowners, landlords, property owners – who could be forged into a bloc with the aim of disarming any de-financialisation agenda.
Institutionally, there will be a massive challenge in getting the state to respond to crisis in the way we’ve described above, both in terms of the close relationships between the permanent representatives of the state in the civil service and financial elites, and in terms of the lack of experience of state actors in leading the sort of actions that would be necessary to make de-financialisation happen.
But far from being concerned with a revolving door between the financial sector and government, the Treasury argued in a review of its crisis response published in 2012 that a “higher degree of staff exchange with other institutions” would have been helpful, despite noting the organisation’s high turnover was partly due to “officials returning to other organisations after short spells on loan or secondment at the Treasury”. This is a glimpse into the depths of the institutional challenge the left would face.
If the institutional culture of the Treasury would be problematic, the institutional independence of the central bank would potentially be deadly. The strategy outlined here would require the Bank of England to be working in lock-step with the Treasury, willing to take unprecedented power over the banking sector, and wield that power in a way that is anathema to its present remit. The Bank of England gets its mandate from the Treasury, but control over the bank on a day-to-day level is independent from government influence. The Bank of England’s raison d’être is to protect the financial sector first and foremost. It’s not clear that a change in its remit would be sufficient to deliver a de-financialisation crisis response strategy – the vexed question of central bank independence may have to be confronted head on.
There would also potentially be an institutional challenge at the intra-national level, depending on Britain’s relationship with the EU at that time, with rules preventing controls on capital at EU level potentially acting as an impediment.
Legally, the ownership proposals here could come under challenge if the sector is nationalised in its entirety, rather than on a failed bank-by-bank basis, due to stringent UK property laws, and potentially a challenge at the European Convention of Human Rights. There is also the potential for debt restructuring to be challenged on a legal property basis.
In non-crisis times, this combination of barriers would likely make a full-frontal attack on the proprietors of the financial sector too dangerous to pursue for a left government. But the weakness of finance is its high-risk dimension, which means that it needs the state to break with governing norms to protect it in times of crisis.
Instability is built into the logic of finance-led growth. In a political environment of a mass movement against the banks where it loses hegemony in society as a whole, the government can be put in a position where the barriers to a de-financialisation crisis response strategy suddenly do not look as daunting as upholding the status quo.
A case study in de-financialisation: Iceland
It’s not within the scope of this essay to attempt to answer conclusively all of the barriers identified above – further research and policy development is required on that front. Beyond posing questions and suggesting possible answers, we can look to one of the few examples from the 2008 crash which at least partially disproves the pessimistic view that there is no alternative to bailout economics.
Iceland responded to the 2008 crash with “a series of conventional and unconventional policy actions” which led to “a certain degree of de-financialisation”, According to Björn Rúnar Guðmundsson, in his study of financialisation and financial crisis in Iceland.
An Emergency Act broke up the three big banks into a new bank for domestic activities and an “old’ bank for international activities. The government also pledged to guarantee all bank deposits. Then, capital controls were introduced that meant “all capital account transactions were prohibited in order to prevent the exit of financial assets, most of which were held by foreign investors”. Capital controls ended up lasting until 2017, “impeding general financial sector recovery”.
These two policies were the foundations for a transformation in banking portfolios and activity. All loans transferred to the new banks were-revalued “on a fair value basis”. The focus of the banks became about “debt restructuring and balance sheet repair” while “market turnover in the foreign exchange market, the equity market, and the bond market plummeted”.
The outcome was a profound de-leveraging across the economy, especially in the business sector. Corporate debt fell from over 300 per cent of GDP just before the crash to under 80 per cent by 2014 as a result of systematic “write-downs and write-off’s”. Household debt fell more slowly, but by 2014 it had reduced to 2005 levels.
The clean-up of bank balance sheets has proved enormously successful, even for the banks, which have “revalued their portfolios upwards and report profits accordingly”. In this way, Guðmundsson finds, “the originally impaired loan portfolios have over performed relative to expectations in the wake of the crisis.”
The outcome is Iceland’s economic development model has fundamentally changed, with “a shift away from financial-led towards increasingly export-led growth”. The drop in the value of the Krona internationally during the crisis provided the basis for an export-led recovery, with the country recording a current account surplus in 2014 for the first time in over a decade. The current account deficit peaked in 2006 at 23 per cent of GDP.
The combination of international political pressure to comply with European Economic Area (EEA) rules and a re-assertion of the domestic political power of finance led to the end of capital controls in 2017. With foreign debts and international capital flows only slowly beginning to re-assert themselves, it’s too soon to say if the neoliberal model is back, but this does highlight the limitations of Iceland’s partial de-financialisation.
While Icelandic banking was re-organised, it was not sufficiently re-purposed, with short-term profitability remaining the key driver. Despite this, Iceland is evidence that while the barriers to de-financialisation are formidable, they are not insurmountable, especially if the depths of the crisis of financialisation is profound.
Conclusion
An interesting thought experiment, which we will never know the answer to, is the following: if Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell were in charge during the 2008 crash, rather than Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, would things have turned out any differently?
McDonnell has certainly been thinking about this. Richard Barbrook, founder of the group ‘class wargames’ which was behind the viral General Election game ‘Corbyn Run’, has been advising the shadow Chancellor’s team on war gaming a crisis in a Labour government.
“A run on the Pound, an exodus of investors and a financial crash like the one that struck the global economy in 2008 are the types of scenarios the team will try to respond to,” PoliticsHome reported.
It’s clear that McDonnell especially is a deep thinker about how socialists should utilise government power in a neoliberal economy, knowing that he will not necessarily have many organic allies. Across large sections of British industry there is no workers movement to speak of, and across the Western world there are few socialists in power to act as international allies. He can’t even rely on his own backbench MPs.
What appears to be McDonnell’s thinking is that, given those circumstances, survival will be the first order of the day. Not to be forced out of office by the power of finance will be an achievement in and of itself. With that in mind, the shadow chancellor may be satisfied with the financial sector’s growing ease towards the idea of a Corbyn-led Labour Government.
But, as the futurist writer Alvin Toffler put it, “if you don’t have a strategy, you’re part of someone else’s strategy”. While it may be comforting for Labour to feel like The City has been neutralised as a political threat to the party’s electoral prospects, finance will also be looking to subdue any radical reforms from Corbyn and McDonnell which could threaten its power.
In the age of financialisation, if a left government does not go on the offensive against the power of finance, can it really expect not to pay the price at some future point down the line? Plus, in a crisis-ridden financial system, can the major contradictions of financialisation really be left unresolved by a Labour Government, à la 2008? And can a Labour government realistically face up to the urgent challenges of our time – including but not limited to climate breakdown, inequality and poverty, a demographic crisis and automation – while allowing finance to remain in the saddle of the British economy?
None of these questions have easy answers, but avoiding them will only see problems accumulate. The ‘what is to be done?’ question about finance needs urgent attention.
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