Paul Mason

Money is created by states and always has been; it is not something that exists independently of governments. Money is always the ‘promise to pay’ by a government. Its value is not reliant on the intrinsic worth of a metal; it is a measure of people’s trust in the permanence of the state.

Once you get your head around this, the true nature of neoliberalism’s problem becomes clear. The problem is not ‘Damn, we printed too much money against the real stuff in the economy!’ It is, though few will admit it, ‘Damn, nobody believes in our state any more.’

‘Financialization’ is a long word; if I could use one with fewer syllables I would, because it is at the heart of the neoliberal project and it needs to be better understood. Economists use the term to describe four specific changes that began in the 1980s:
Companies turned away from banks and went to the open financial markets to fund expansion.
Banks turned to consumers as a new source of profit, and to a set of high-risk, complex activities that we call investment banking.
Consumers became direct participants in the financial markets: credit cards, overdrafts, mortgages, student loans and motor car loans became part of everyday life. A growing proportion of profit in the economy is now being made not by employing workers, or providing goods and services that they buy with their wages, but by lending to them.
All simple forms of finance now generate a market in complex finance higher up the chain: every house buyer or car driver is generating a knowable financial return somewhere in the system. Your mobile phone contract, gym membership, household energy – all your regular payments – are packaged into financial instruments, generating steady interest for an investor, long before you decide to buy them. And then somebody you have never met places a bet on whether you will make the payments.