Fear and greed are terms that make light of the uncertainty in the finance world. Huge global financial institutions rely on emotional relations of trust and distrust to suppress the uncertainties. Many financial firms develop policies towards risk, rather than accepting the reality of an uncertain future. They amass data in the futile hope of gaining certainty and to claim their options are more ‘risk-free’ than competitors. Emotions in Finance examines the views of experienced elites in the international financial world. It argues the current financial era is driven by a utopianism - a hope - that the future can be collapsed into the present. It points out policy implications of this short-term view at the unstable peak of global finance. This book provides a timely account of the influence of emotion and speculation on the world’s increasingly volatile financial sector. The author includes absorbing interview material from public and private bankers in the United States, UK and Australia.
• Evidence from international financial elites - with original focused interviews - on central banks, investment banks and finance press • Novel argument based on major research that uncertainty breeds distrust and fear at impersonal levels of struggles for attributions of success, blame and above all, credibility • Major critique of present financialisation of life as driven by the top organisations, not an amorphous aggregate in financial markets
Contents
1. Global markets or social relations of money; 2. Emotion in the kingdom of rationality; 3. Financial media as institutional trust agencies; 4. Emotions in the boardroom; 5. Credibility and confidence in central banks; 6. Hierarchy of trust; 7. Overwhelmed by numbers; 8. Time utopia in finance; 9. Implications: emotions and rationality.
Review
'As a chronicle of shared financial anxieties, written by an observer from an alien world, this is an excellent book.' Times Higher Education Supplement
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