Everyone has some form of debt, such as a student loan, a mortgage, or credit card debt. We follow the Central Bank’s interest rate policy as closely as our favourite football team, because it directly affects us. This is the case for most of the population, even in rich countries like Norway. We hear all these stories about how it was different for our parents’ generation, whereas it is not clear how we ended up here. Financialisation, a concept referred to by heterodox economics and the surrounding literature, is among the most explanatory approaches to the phenomenon.
This talk explores how financialisation can offer insights into understanding the significance of finance within ever more areas of economic and social life. It starts with a theoretical framework, which builds on Marx’s interest-bearing capital, to clarify how fictitious capital can instrumentalise all sorts of revenue for profit-making purposes. It continues with the historical analysis of developments leading to financialisation as a characteristic of the neoliberal era in relation to the financial sector, the non-financial sector and households. It concludes with a discussion that incorporates literature on financialisation in Norway to shed light on contemporary political and economic issues, ranging from the Norwegian Oil Fund as an asset to homeownership as an investment.
Serap Saritas is an independent researcher in political economy and a former researcher at the University of Oslo. She gained her PhD in Economics from SOAS, University of London, in 2016. Her research interests include financialisation, pension systems and social reproduction. www.linkedin.com/in/serap-saritas
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Serap-Saritas-2/research
There will be served pizza!
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