Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Everyday IPE: revealing everyday forms of change in the world economy
- Part I Regimes as cultural weapons of the weak
- Part II Global economic change from below
- 5 The everyday social sources of imperial and hegemonic financial orders
- 6 Everyday investor subjects and global financial change: the rise of Anglo-American mass investment
- 7 Peasants as subaltern agents in Latin America: neoliberalism, resistance and the power of the powerless
- Part III Bringing Eastern agents in
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - The everyday social sources of imperial and hegemonic financial orders
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Everyday IPE: revealing everyday forms of change in the world economy
- Part I Regimes as cultural weapons of the weak
- Part II Global economic change from below
- 5 The everyday social sources of imperial and hegemonic financial orders
- 6 Everyday investor subjects and global financial change: the rise of Anglo-American mass investment
- 7 Peasants as subaltern agents in Latin America: neoliberalism, resistance and the power of the powerless
- Part III Bringing Eastern agents in
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Imagine that you are a member of the working or lower-middle classes. You scrimp and save to put together some savings with the hope of acquiring a home loan. Banks, however, refuse you credit on the grounds of your socioeconomic position and nobody will lend you money at anything but outrageously high interest rates. Such usury is apparently justified because your socioeconomic position suggests that you are an unsafe bet. And while you are going without, the talk on the street is that your government has been implicitly subsidising high-income earners' ever-increasing private international investments with public money. In particular, you hear complaints that publicly funded warships are being sent to far-off lands to ensure payment on private investments at a time when the domestic economy is stagnating. Worse still, some politicians want to raise tariffs on foodstuffs to pay for the construction of more warships on the grounds of protecting national security. You and your friends don't believe their claims to the legitimacy of such policy changes. If such a policy is pursued then not only will you not have access to a home loan but price increases on basic commodities will hurt your family and community. Unsurprisingly, your everyday frustration about lack of access to credit and property, as well as the prospect of increased relative tax burdens, builds.
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- Information
- Everyday Politics of the World Economy , pp. 83 - 102Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007
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