Global Financial Crisis| Time, Communication and Financial Collapse

Abstract

This article begins with a time-related critique of the financialized capitalism which took shape in the 1980s and 1990s. Financialized capitalism was riven by temporal contradictions and inbuilt uncertainties which were obscured, yet magnified by, mediated fusions of money, information, and economic activity. In this context, I consider the gathering imminence of the 2007–2008 finance collapse. Four interrelated causal factors are identified: the financial-strategic influence of the Wall Street investment bank model, the securitization of Anglo-American household debt, massive trading in mortgage derivatives, and the growing capacity of mass media and the Internet to magnify financial uncertainties. The article next traces the technologically-mediated reflexivity of financial panic. Finally, given a financial world of imminent danger and inevitable collapse, I consider the general myopia of the Anglo American financial media.