Financialisation

# Financialisation of the economy since the 1970s as response to falling profit rates

> The 21st century has thus far been a century of multiple crises. At its start, 9/11 in 2001 created a political crisis that set off a vicious cycle of terror and war. In 2008, a new world economic crisis unfolded that had its origin in the systematic crisis-proneness of capitalism and the financialisation of the economy since the 1970s as response to falling profit rates. Many governments bailed out failing banks and corporations, which increased national debt so that they implemented austerity measures, from which workers and the poor suffered. In 2015, a humanitarian refugee crisis emerged in Europe that has been the consequence of war, natural disasters, and global inequalities. Following the world economic crisis, in a significant number of countries right-wing authoritarian political leaders came to power or strengthened their share of the vote, including Donald Trump in the USA. A crisis of democracy unfolded. In 2020, COVID-19 hit the world and created a simultaneous health crisis, economic crisis, political crisis, cultural crisis, moral crisis, and global crisis.

# Special type of financialisation that took hold in the 1980s […] now increasingly data-centred and algorithmic

> There is certainly a structural causality between the development of digital technologies and the new dominance enacted by finance. For one, without these technologies, the special type of financialisation that took hold in the 1980s and still continues today would simply not be possible. Financialisation itself has evolved; it’s now increasingly data-centred and algorithmic. Without digital technologies, some of today’s financial instruments simply would not exist.