Finance Servant or Deceiver Financialization at the Crossroads [Hardcover]

During the last?30 years, finance has increased not only its share of economic activity but also of people's aspirations. This has transformed?society by increasingly organizing?it around the search for financial efficiency.?Is a society based on fundamental values of free judgment, responsibility and solidarity still possible?Introduction PART I: THE FINANCIAL ICEBERG The Historical Development of Finance Players and Institutions The Financial World View PART II: A NEW PATTERN Financial Relationships and Financial Transactions The Spread of Transactions Very Large Corporations: The Vehicles of Financialization Financialization of the Economic Fabric Tying Customers to Businesses Other Aspects of Financialization Implication of the New Pattern PART III : FINANCE  WHAT KIND OF SOCIETY DO WE WANT? Limits Inherent in the Process Itself Limits Inherent in Human Nature What is to be Done? Bibliography Index

'Writing in September 2008, watching the financial markets drag the world into recession, the importance of this book is clear. It sets out convincingly the deceit of a financialised economy, driven by forces which betray. The authors understand the issues, and have spent years in preparation for this excellent book which permits a critical understanding of the forces which are so badly affecting us. It is not a simple polemic, nor wholesale condemnation but an ethically driven critique of the false path down which the western economies have traveled.'

- Rev Justin Welby, Dean of Liverpool Cathedral, UK, Personal and Ethical Adviser to the Association of Corporate Treasurers, and Member of the Committee of Reference F&C plc.

'Paul Dembinski is an economist who believes (as I do) that economics should be entertaining good special relations with the neighbouring disciplines of philosophy, psychology, sociology and anthropology. In this extraordinary essay, drawing on a decade of work of the Observatoire de la Finance, he lã2