Book dossier

The end of finance

by Jan Toporowski

"The End of Finance develops a theory of capital market inflation rooted in the work of Veblen, Kalecki, Keynes and Minsky, demonstrating how it disinclines productive activity on the part of the firms, provides only short-term conditions that are propitious for privatization, and distorts monetary policy in the long term. The author examines the role of pension fund schemes and financial derivatives in transmitting capital market inflation and provides a nuanced analysis of the contradictory role they play in the financial system. Capital market inflation is also examined in its historical context and compared with past inflations, in particular the South Sea and Mississippi Bubbles, which spawned the first financial derivatives and the first privatizations. This broad historical vision allows us to see these forms of inflation as temporary and provisional in character."--BOOK JACKET. "A proper understanding of these complex phenomena, it is argued, depends on a critique of orthodox finance theory which merely extrapolates financial values from the past into a future of utopian equilibrium. The original theory of finance which grows out of this critique will be of interest to students and researchers of financial economics, practitioners in finance, and policy makers."--BOOK JACKET.