ABSTRACT
Since the last decades of the 20th century, the development of advanced capitalist economies was characterized by two major trends: first, a continuous and extraordinary growth of financial wealth, surpassing by far the growth of nominal GDP. In connection with this, the so-called FIRE-sector (financial services, insurance and real estate) has steadily increased its relative contribution to total economic value creation and employment, and became a dominant source of profit generation; these developments were to be observed in the US as well as in other OECD countries (Krippner 2005; Piketty 2014; Guttmann 2016). Political economists and economic sociologists have coined the term “financialization” to circumscribe these changes. Second, a long lasting decline of real economic growth rates, which was combined with rising unemployment, and stagnating or shrinking real mass incomes (Brenner 2006; Streeck 2017). As we know today, the global financial crisis of 2007/2008 did not result in a marked change of these trends. Even after 2007, no lasting contraction of the overall value of global financial assets could be observed. After a short recession, the volume of financial wealth and bank balances continued to rise, though at a much slower pace. At the same time, the recovery of the real economy in the US as well as in Japan and Europe was more sluggish than it used to be in earlier business cycles.
