Ruling or Serving Society? The Case for Reforming Financial Services
This book argues that the 2007/08 financial crisis revealed fundamental flaws in how the financial sector had evolved over the previous three decades. While access to financial services has improved, the total stock of debt in the global economy has risen
- PDF / 1,084,152 Bytes
- 119 Pages / 433.701 x 612.283 pts Page_size
- 30 Downloads / 201 Views
Shahid Ahmed
Ruling or Serving Society?
Shahid Ahmed
Ruling or Serving Society? The Case for Reforming Financial Services
Shahid Ahmed UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific Bangkok, Thailand
ISBN 978-3-030-00520-7 ISBN 978-3-030-00521-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00521-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018957070 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Preface
The 2007/08 financial crisis, following other less-severe financial crises in the 1980s and 1990s, revealed that all economies, developed and developing, had become dangerously vulnerable to the way financial services had operated during the last three decades.1 Not so long ago, conventional Economics textbooks taught students that the primary purpose of economic activity was the production of goods and services in response to the demand emanating from society. Producers of goods and services combined the factors of production, i.e. land, labour and capital, in the most efficient way possible and then provided their output to society, in competition with others. The principal, if not exclusive, function of finance was to intermediate between savers, on the one hand, and investors, on the other, to provide the funds required by the producers but always keeping in view its fiduciary duties. More recently, i.e. since the 1970s, intermediation has also extended to financing longer-term household mortgages and personal consumption. Over the last three decades, however, as neoliberal ideas and globalization have gained intellectual ascendanc
Data Loading...
