Recent decades have marked both the globalisation of capitalism following the collapse of communism and its financialisation following the rapid growth of the world's securities markets. These developments have impacted the core-periphery divide in capitalism. In the case of globalisation, the...

Although the federal funds rate started rising from mid-2004 US long term rates continued to fall. A likely contributory factor to this conundrum was the contemporaneous increase in US bond demand. Using ARDL-based models, which accommodate structural breaks, this paper estimates the impact of...

The crisis that broke out in mid-2007 was caused by the fact that the CDO market had grown to a size sufficient to wreak general havoc when it suddenly collapsed. Several authors have argued that economic inequality was important to the growth of this market. This paper attempts to strengthen...

There is no doubt that the shadow banking system played an important role in the global financial crisis. What is in question is whether it played a causal or merely amplifying role. This paper argues in favour of the latter. Focusing specially on the process of the production of CDOs through...

Safe assets and shadow banking are two closely linked phenomena in contemporary finance. The link is loan securitisation: at a time of a global safe asset shortage, it falls on the shadow banking system to help make good that shortage by manufacturing extra quantities of asset backed securities....

This paper examines the impact of the covid pandemic on the financialisation process, here viewed as the growing domination of the world's financial securities markets over the world's material output base. Two major arguments are advanced. The first is that the pandemic has reinforced the...