Financialization as a Global Process (original) (raw)

The first chapter shows how the structural conditions for the current process of financialization of the Brazilian territory developed. On the basis of these new conditions are the process of liberalization of the economy in practically all countries and the diffusion of technical infrastructures with global reach that have allowed for more efficient, broad, and rapid circulation of information and financial flows. Attention is drawn to the formation of the first financial centers and offshore markets-mainly in Europe but also offshore jurisdictions in more peripheral areasas well as the relative position of the city of São Paulo as a financial center in the context of Latin America, and in the international division of labor as a whole. Keywords International financial system • Global information networks • International financial centers • Neoliberalization • Latin America 1.1 From the Keynesianism of Bretton Woods to the Neoliberalism of Washington Consensus As Braudel (1958) demonstrated in most of his work, the organization of geographical space and present time is mostly a result from the so-called longue durée. This is also true about the basis on which the world financial system and main international financial centers were created. This recent genesis remotes to the Pax Britannica period that occurred basically on the nineteenth century, more precisely from the year 1815, inaugurating what Arrighi (1994) named the "free trade imperialism." 1 1 Endowed with a powerful industry in all economic sectors that emerged in the wake of European bourgeois revolutions-mainly the industry of capital goods-England was also the main imperialist power in the world, with colonies spread in all continents, and that provided captive market to sell its products, in addition to large amount of resources from collecting taxes from these colonies (Arrighi 1994, 54). It should be reminded, however, that England was, since the end of the eighteenth century, the country with the most pronounced industrial and commercial development, becoming the great "exporter industry" of the world (Mantoux 1979). Regarding the so-called "Imperial Britain," even Mackinder ([1902] 1969, 343) also showed that "under a condition of universal free trade such a nation would almost inevitably increase its lead, and might ultimately reduce the whole world to economic subjection."