Disorder and Public Concern Around Globalization

4The Time of Finance

Two approaches clash traditionally when it comes to finance. On the one hand, we have those who believe in the neutrality of money and finance with regard to the working of the economy determined essentially by preferences and technologie. On the other hand, there are those who see finance as the predator of this economy and imagine what could be a real economy ultimately freed from any influence of finance. They both want to ignore the close interdependence between real and financial phenomena at the heart of Keynes’ analysis¹.

Financial markets have emerged as vectors of the new globalized and digitized economy. Their presumed efficiency did not resist the bursting of financial and real estate bubbles reflecting the excesses committed. It would be, nevertheless, reductive to point to them as the sole and ideal culprit.

Accusations leveled at finance are certainly all the more credible as the latter escaped all control. It has taken precedence over industry. Financial choices have outweighed real choices and the diversion of value of its creation. The truth that exists in this statement should not obscure the fact that there is no industrial development without the development of financial systems, whether this involves channeling savings toward investment by making the time preferences of capital owners compatible with those of their users or guiding and controlling the decisions of companies in view of better using available resources.

Undoubtedly, the ...