BREAKING THE BIFURCATED ECONOMY: Financiers and the Crisis of Public Imagination

“Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. We can now revise that and witness the attempt to imagine capitalism by way of imagining the end of the world.” Fredric Jameson

“To allow money to become a source of revenue to private issuers is to create, first, a secret and illicit arm of the government and, last, a rival power strong enough ultimately to overthrow all other forms of government.” Frederick Soddy

“A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.” Mark Twain

“Yet even as finance capital eludes and defies governments, and as legislators bow to the sector’s demands to cut public services in the name of ‘austerity’, finance has become more, not less, dependent on the state and on taxpayer support. Despite its detachment from the real economy and from state regulation, the global finance sector has succeeded in capturing, effectively looting, and then subordinating governments and their taxpayers to the interests of financiers”. Ann Pettifor

As Mark Fisher (of Capitalist Realism fame) keeps telling us, the unmitigated mythology of capitalist omnipotence has taken us all in. Plus, as for it being “easier to imagine the end of the world”, we might not have to tax our imaginations on that score much longer. Besides, as I maintain, capitalism (if it ever really…