Wesley C. Marshall

Financialization in Mexico: trajectory and limits

This article seeks to contribute to the academic debate regarding financialization, through an analysis of its evolution in Mexico. As we argue, Mexico has been at the forefront of the tendencies and historical events that have defined financialization at the global level. Moreover, Mexico is alone among the worlds largest economies in its continual application of public policies that serve the needs of a financialized economy. The degree to which such policies have been applied and their corresponding results have made Mexico one of the more interesting case studies in the causes and consequences of financialization.

The Causes and Consequences of the Misdiagnosis of the Financial Crisis in the United States

Using an analytical framework that divides banking crises into ‘classic’ and ‘secondary’ crises, this article analyzes the banking crisis that broke out in the United States in the summer of 2007 and the response of US authorities. While quite simple in itself, this framework allows for a novel interpretation of the unfolding of the crisis and for evaluating US authorities in the design and implementation of crisis resolution mechanisms. As suggested by the title, the principal hypothesis of the article is that the crisis was fundamentally misdiagnosed, leading to a flawed bailout that all but guarantees its inefficacy in bringing the US financial system back to health at a reasonable fiscal cost.

Has the US Lurched into a Process of Underdevelopment? Insights from Celso Furtado

Abstract: In this paper, we apply Celso Furtado’s vision of the process of economic development to the United States’ economy. Furtado was a creator of Latin American structuralism and continues to be one of the region’s most influential economists. Yet, he is little known in the English literature. As we argue, there are few academics who offer a theoretical framework capable of robustly evaluating the current trajectory of U.S. economic development with the depth of Furtado. Through his analytical lens, and with some help from John Maynard Keynes, we examine the present reality, as well as the more remote economic history of the US. We argue that, seen through Furtado’s lens, the US can now be accurately described as an under-developing economy.

Origins of banking crises in Latin America: a critical view

The objective of this paper is to bridge an important gap between academic literature and the lessons of recent financial crises in Latin America. Although standard economic theory holds that banking crises are a singular phenomenon that should be treated in a uniform fashion, the banking crises of Mexico, Argentina, and Uruguay, and the responses of local authorities, convincingly demonstrate that there are in fact two distinct types of banking crisis that require equally distinct resolution measures. Taking into account these historical episodes, this paper presents a conceptual framework that both accommodates the possibility of two types of banking crisis and offers the analytical framework necessary to examine benefits and disadvantages of different resolution strategies when applied to distinct types of crisis.

Discount Banking in Mexico

Abstract In 2013, the US Department of Justice levied a fine on the multinational bank HSBC for several financial crimes, including the widespread laundering of proceeds from the narcotics trade between Mexico and the United States. Other than establishing the too-big-to-prosecute precedent, the case also provided evidence regarding an academically underappreciated banking practice—money laundering as discount banking. In getting to the heart of this form of financial innovation in reverse, and the key role played by banks in determining money’s value, this article also situates the drug trade and money laundering as a defining characteristic of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)-era Mexican economy.

Vested Interests and the Common Man as Seen Through Monetary and Fiscal Policy: Flooding Wall Street or Main Street?

Abstract: There are many angles through which a critical observer can analyze the divergent class interests in most aspects of macroeconomic management. We examine the insistence of financial authorities of all major economies on reviving economic activity through monetary — and not fiscal — policy as a particularly clear example of favoring vested interests over the interests of the common man. Nearly a century after Thorstein Veblen wrote on the subject, one can find many parallel elements to the political landscape of the times. Today, the common man is often expressed by the “99%,” and many accept that the dominant vested interest is that of global banks. Unlike in Veblen’s times, economists today have many historical experiments in economic management that they can consult. By employing logic, historical experience, and an understanding of our current global finance-led capitalism, we offer a preliminary institutionalist analysis of the mechanisms of current monetary policy that “flood” Wall Street, while leaving employment, production, and investment — Main Street — all but forgotten. We then explain how vested interests have abandoned fiscal policy and left a deflationary macroeconomic environment.

Provision of Social Costs and the Free Market: A Polanyian Perspective

Abstract: In this article, we analyze at a conceptual level some of the more relevant effects of the neoliberal takeover on the provision of social costs, including employment, health care, and nutrition. Adopting key perspectives of Karl Polanyi and other thinkers, we develop our examination under the seemingly perpetual conflict between markets and social reproduction. We argue that financialization has both expanded market spaces and changed relationships within those spaces. The ever-greater domination of financial markets means that employment has become increasingly more precarious in the strict spaces of the labor market. At the same time, financialization has steadily eroded the social forms that exist outside of formal markets, greatly weakening the mechanisms through which societies can both defend themselves from predatory markets and reproduce themselves with some degree of purpose and hope for the future.

Financial flows and Mexico’s disintegrated spaces of production: Banking and Financial Circuits and the Role of the State

The central focus of this book is the relationship between money, the sphere of production, and the State. It explores how best to adapt the fundamental ideas of the circulationist perspective to achieve a better understanding of the financialisation of the production processes within contemporary capitalist economies. Importantly, the expert contributors illustrate that the true challenge ahead is to address how these new emerging forms can be eventually tamed, a challenge that the recent financial crisis has forcefully proven essential.