Where there's muck, there's brass - and class: financial market regulation and public policy

Taking as its point of departure the financial market crises from 2007 onwards and the misconduct revealed, this chapter proposes that a conceptual and governance shift is needed: from regulation, which is past- and present-focussed and concerned with means, to policy, which is future-orientated and concerned with ends. Whilst debates on regulation have been much concerned with distinctions and balances between its public and private forms, debates on policy have increasingly turned to more fundamental questions about the structure of finance and how to transform it. The chapter summarily reviews new cross-disciplinary understandings of money creation and of the manner in which finance projects losses into the future, corresponding to the rake-off of profits today. Accordingly, it has been proposed that such financiers constitute a ‘risk class’ (or risk stratum or faction), which manages and benefits from such transfers. In conclusion, the chapter eyes policies of suppression, polluter pays, and right-sizing of finance.

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