Over the last few decades, capitalism has increasingly prioritized financialization and the mobility of capital over labor. This has led governments and central banks, particularly in the US, to pursue monetary policies aimed at stabilizing financial markets and asset prices rather than achieving full employment or wage growth for workers. The interests of large financial and industrial firms, wealthy individuals, and rentiers have increasingly aligned in support of policies that benefit asset holders over wage earners.

1. Irish Political Economy for
Trade Unionists and Activists
5. Austerity, Tax Avoidance
and Privatization

15. DREAM…

16. INNOVATION

21. The purpose of capitalism is self-expansion – capital begets capital – and it
does so by monetizing social value and human labour. This is a circuit of
transformation.
Immanuel Wallerstein, Historical Capitalism (London: Verso, 2011), 15.

26. Over the last quarter of a century
something fundamental seems to
have changed in the way in which
capitalism works.
The tendency since 1970 has
been towards greater
geographical mobility of capital.

28. Financialization refers to the increasing importance
of financial markets, financial motives, financial
institutions and financial elites in the operation of
the economy and its governing institutions, both at
the national and international levels.
Gerald Epstein, ‘Financialization, Rentier Interests, and Central Bank Policy’,2002
1970s – The Monetarist revolution
1980s – war on labour
1990s – Credit as a substitute for wage increases
2000s – Credit solution for wage stagnation fails
Present day – open conflict over monetary policy once again

30. “In the case of the United States, financialization during
the 1990s led to a closer alignment of large industrial
and financial firms in the U.S., leading to a greater
emphasis by Alan Greenspan and the U.S. Federal
Reserve in financial asset appreciation as a goal of
monetary policy.”
Gerald Epstein (2001)

31. “In the case of the United States, financialization during
the 1990s led to a closer alignment of large industrial
and financial firms in the U.S., leading to a greater
emphasis by Alan Greenspan and the U.S. Federal
Reserve in financial asset appreciation as a goal of
monetary policy.”
Gerald Epstein (2001)
“The goal of monetary expansion has been to do just
enough to stabilize financial asset prices without going
far enough to produce catch-up growth in the labor
market”
Matthew Yglesias, Rentiers and Financialization (2011)

32. “What [the wealthy], businesses and
banks share is a common interest in
supporting asset prices, a lack of
interest in seeking full employment
unless it is a prerequisite for
supporting asset prices, and an
aversion to any policies that can
trigger wage inflation.”
Ashwin Parameswares (2011)