A fetish and fiction of finance : unraveling the subprime crisis

Auteur(s) et Affiliation(s)



Description :
The article unravels the experiences of eight Norwegian municipalities whose investments plummeted as the subprime crisis unfolded: investments that had no immediate ties to subprime. Focusing on the processes, practices, and instruments of financialization, it puts forward two new analytical concepts—“the fetishization of the knowledge of risk” and “fictitious distance”—to help explain how the crisis spread so quickly and extensively that it threatened not only the municipalities’ investments but also the functioning of globa finance as a whole. It concludes that in the highly interconnected entanglement of geographies and finance that make up the global financial system, the fetishes and fictions of finance cannot be ignored.


Type de document :
Article de périodique

Source :
Economic geography, issn : 0013-0095, 2014, vol. 90, n°. 2, p. 213-235, nombre de pages : 23, Références bibliographiques : 4 p.

Date :
2014

Editeur :
Pays édition : Etats-Unis, Worcester, MA, Clark University