> Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> > the
> > differences revolve around those "social" issues that simply lie outside
> > the substantial interests of the ruling class. (I find "ruling class"
> > and every other term I or others have used unsatisfactory, but i"ll leae
> > it here.)
>
> How can this idea of "capitalists" as the embodiment of demonic genius be
> made consistent with the irrationality at work in the development of
> financial derivative markets over the last 40 years, the irrationality
> "responsible" for the most recent financial crisis?
>
> I've started reading Scott Patterson's just published "The Quants" which,
> even in the opening chapters I've managed to read, provides lots of
> additional evidence of that irrationality.
>
> It's a problem when financial journalists like Patterson (a reporter for
> the Wall Street Journal) are sources of much greater insight into the
> functioning of financial markets than "Marxists" embracing the EMH and
> imagining that lending back a significant part of the surplus generated by a
> successful attack on wages and job security to those successfully attacked
> (i.e. to those incapable of ever repaying the loans) is the work of genius.
>
> Accumulating worthless financial assets isn't a good substitute for
> accumulating capital.
>
> Ted
Have you read Arrighi's Long Twentieth Century? I've just started, but basically he claims that financialization has always accompanied the transition of geopolitical leadership.