Although I think the role of the Soviets in the creation of the Eurodollar market cannot be discounted, there is alternate account of the creation of this market that says that the Eurodollar markets emerged as a result of the dramatic expansion in US foreign direct investment after WWII. In other words, as American firms went abroad, their banks followed to continue to serve their customers. I don't know which account has more explanatory power.
The Eurobond markets are certainly a product of capitalist rebellion against US regulations. The Eurobond market emerged after 1963 when the Kennedy administration imposed a tax to discourage US citizens from buying bonds in foreign companies. Of course, as with the Eurodollar markets, what is fascinating is not that these markets emerged but that regulatory officials did not do anything to shut them down. Part of the explanation for this phenomenon must lie in the norms of capitalism whereby the acquisition of property (in this case capital) is seen to confer rights. Hence the restriction of capital movements is viewed as a restriction of individual rights.
Correct me if I am wrong but are Hardt and Negri recounting a linear narrative in which capital defies imperialism over a narrow historical moment?
I don't think that the idea of "stateless" money is at all new; this is not the first time that "big capital" has come to the conclusion that working outside the confines of the state is pretty profitable. Stateless money essentially implies the existence of a private credit arrangement between more than two actors. To this extent, every age of financial globalization had operated through the use of money that is "stateless" to some degree. For example, "bills of exchange" in the fourteenth century allowed Italian merchants to receive payments from clients across Europe without exchanging currency. In essence, bankers learned to create "bank money," and eventually a proto international capital market in these bills of exchange developed as the trade in commodities became less lucrative than the trade in bills of exchange. Prior to the fourteenth century, I am sure that dispersed religious and ethnic communities (e.g., the Jews) helped to create "stateless" forms of money/credit.
There is an ebb and a flow to capitalist history, our age of globalization does not carry universal historical significance. We are not witnessing the first time that capitalism has transcended the boundaries "created by imperialist practices." What is interesting to me is why capitalism transcends the boundaries of the state/empire at certain moments, while other periods are marked by the restriction of strategies of accumulation to national or other "natural" spaces.
Best,
Vikash Yadav Philadelphia, PA