Talk:Financialization

Reductive and one-sided

Seems to me that this article is more in praise of a one-sided thesis (and a copyvio of it) than a description of a phenomenon, namely the growth of financial activities as a key economic factor, whatever its drawbacks. Like any industry, whether traditional or fast growing, finance has its own drawbacks. Why not an article on chemistryzation or electronization ? This reductive approach is in bad need to be completed and rebalanced. --Pgreenfinch (talk) 08:29, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree. The article is too long and presents some confusing information like these pie chart graphs of future trades. Either delete the article or reduce it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.233.233.166 (talk) 20:35, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Useful Entry - needs work

Financialization is something new relative to our time. Financialization is not merely finance which is the commercial activity of providing funds and capital. I figure you would say that it is finance for its own sake. So, to say that it is like saying 'chemistryzation' is not to understand what the word is meant to suggest. The pie charts at the end of the article support the basic thesis stated in the first statement. From what I understand, and I could be wrong, obviously, is that traditionally finance was used to generate capital for the development of the means of production. I agree that the article needs to be written in a more cogent way, but the suggestions above I find to be arrogant. Bgoedecke (talk) 00:33, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Criticism section

I definitely think there needs to be a criticism section here, but I think there are much better and more widely accepted arguments than the one listed, which is basically completely devoted to the work of one crackpot. A criticism section should be a coherent synthesis of multiple credible sources, rather than what reads like a blurb for someone's book. The arguments are just plain wrong, too. The decline of the US manufacturing sector is widely regarded to be an economic shift from manufacturing to the service sector that has its roots in the increasing number of people receiving a college education and the growing presence of women in the workforce. This should definitely be revised.

Table on financial turnover is heart of the article

and I think deleting it is vandalism. The comparison of dollar numbers for financial turnover compared to GDP go directly to the heart of the critique of financialization: that activity is financial markets is increasingly of no relationship to real economic activity, and in fact as attained such volumes that it impinges or real economic activity. This table is cited in the first chapter of the 2013 book, Crises of Global Economy and the Future of Capitalism: An Insight into the Marx's Crisis Theory. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TonyWikrent (talk • contribs) 05:33, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Deleting poorly presented content is not vandalism, and I disagree that this is the "heart" of the article. The article is just fine without it.

If you want the table in there, then by all means restore it as a table (not a screen shot) with proper wiki-markup, with appropriate rows or cells referenced to reliable sources, using proper wiki citations. A screenshot graphic with footnotes simply dumped beneath it isn't useful. ~Amatulić (talk) 16:17, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Add Sources

To avoid charges of plagiarism, it is necessary to add the corresponding sources. For example, it reads: "The original intent of financialization is to be able to reduce any work-product or service to an exchangeable financial instrument, like currency, and thus make it easier for people to trade these financial instruments.

Workers, through a financial instrument such as a mortgage, could trade their promise of future work/wages for a home. Financialization of risk-sharing makes all insurance possible. The financialization of a government's promises (e.g. U.S. Government bonds) makes all deficit spending possible. Financialization also makes economic rents possible."

This seems to be taken from a Forbes article (access 23-May-2015): http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2014/06/03/why-financialization-has-run-amok/ "Its initial role is the healthy one of translating work-products and services into exchangeable financial instruments to facilitate trade in the real economy. Through mortgages, workers can trade their promise of future wages for a home. Through insurance, homeowners are able to share financial risks and avoid financial catastrophe. The problems begin when financialization becomes excessive."

Meaning of rationalization

In the lede, it says Financialization may permit real goods, services, and risks to be readily exchangeable for currency, and thus make it easier for people to rationalize their assets and income flows. Can someone clarify what the term rationalization means in this case? Timtempleton (talk) 00:15, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

It means to be able to assign dollar values to intangibles in such a way as to be able to compare them on a balance sheet. Once you've done this, you can make "a more rational decision" as to whether you should invest more or less in some given asset. If you don't know how to price something, then you go by gut-feel, and gut-feel is considered to be "not very rational". I don't know which wikipedia page might explain this. 67.198.37.16 (talk) 02:51, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Enshittification

Its been argued that the so-called enshittification is a side-effect of financialization, or is, in some cases, a synonym, meaning the same thing. No, I do not have references for this. At any rate, it should probably be tied into this article. 67.198.37.16 (talk) 02:54, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

I think it's more than just an argument, it's basically proven. It's also the premise of Andrew deWaard's new book, Derivative Media: How Wall Street Devours Culture (2024), which is said to be an unofficial sequel to Jennifer Holt's older book, Empires of Entertainment (2011). One of the interesting points deWaard makes is that the impact of financialization on the entertainment industry (which can lead to enshittification in films and music and acts as a roadblock to new, unique content) is such a new phenomenon that society still hasn't come to grips with how to deal with it. One relevant case study in the entertainment industry that nobody has yet written about is the curious case of Ryan Kavanaugh and Relativity Media. They released an enormous number of great films while escaping enshittification. Perhaps the fact that they went bankrupt twice explains it, but given the close ties between Wall Street and the studio, there is a need for a future dissertation to look closer at this because their rate of artistic success in spite of financialization is higher than just about any other modern studio. The important takeaway here is that I'm not defining success by the amount of money generated, but rather by aesthetics alone, represented by the critical reception and longevity of a work over time and the interest by the public in repeatedly consuming that work. Why exactly the interest in this catalog didn't translate into profits and longevity for the studio is a matter of some debate I suppose, but the sheer lasting quality of their films over time is unprecedented. Virtually every one of the films in their catalog holds up today, and that's almost an impossible and unbelievable feat. I recently did a DYK review for a popular documentary film that won some minor awards and was well received and was even carried by Netflix. Someone actually published a very brief and informal case study of the entire process, from production to distribution, and made the case that it was almost impossible to make any money while making a quality documentary. In other words, there is a financial incentive to deliver bad products, which is we why can't allow financialization to dominate every aspect of society. Numerous examples prove this to be true, from the disastrous products made by Boeing to the takeover of veterinary care by private equity. We also see this happening in academia, with the destruction of humanities departments, the closing down of university art museums, and the conversion of colleges into glorified job training centers for the same companies responsible for financialization. The snake is eating its own tail. Viriditas (talk) 22:44, 30 October 2024 (UTC)