The specter of capital / Joseph Vogl ; translated by Joachim Redner and Robert Savage.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Vogl, Joseph, author.

Series:

Cultural memory in the present

Standardized Title:

Gespenst des Kapitals. English

Language:

English

German

Subjects (All):

Capitalism.

Rational expectations (Economic theory).

Physical Description:

x, 149 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2015]

Language Note:

Translated from the German.

Summary:

In his brilliant interdisciplinary analysis of the global financial crisis, Joseph Vogl aims to demystify finance capitalism by tracing the historical stages through which the financial market achieved its current autonomy. Classical and neoclassical economic theorists have played a decisive role here. Ignoring early warnings about the instability of speculative finance markets, they have persisted in their belief in the inherent equilibrium of the market, describing even major crises as mere aberrations or adjustments and rationalizing dubious financial practices that escalate risk while seeking to manage it. "The market knows best": this is a secular version of Adam Smith's faith in the market's "invisible hand," his economic interpretation of eighteenth-century providentialist theodicy, which subsequently hardened into an unquestioning belief in the self-regulating beneficence of market forces. Vogl shows that financial theory, assisted by mathematical modeling and digital technology, itself operates as a "hidden hand," pushing economic reality into unknown territory. He challenges economic theorists to move beyond the neoclassical paradigm to discern the true contours of the current epoch of financial convulsions. Book jacket.

Contents:

The black swan

Idyll of the market I

Time and capital

Idyll of the market II

Economic and social reproduction

Fault zone.

Notes:

Translation of: Das Gespenst des Kapitals.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9780804789042

0804789045

9780804792929

0804792925

OCLC:

892579118