The Monetary Circuit in a Financialized Economy. From Credit Creation to Profit Realization

In this paper, we analyze the role of financialization, namely securitization and the production of structured financial products, within the functioning of a monetary capitalist economy of production. We do this by embedding such ‘financial innovations’ in an extended financialized monetary circuit. We complement this theoretical analysis with data about the evolution of the commercial banks in the US economy since the end of World War II. We show how the ‘financial side of financialization’, by allowing commercial banks to extend more credit to the economy, and household sector in particular, may have significantly contributed to the monetization of surplus value in neoliberal capitalist regimes. In this sense, we stress how financialization appears to be fully consistent rather than dysfunctional to the needs of capitalist economies. We also note that this may come at the cost of heightened systemic fragility. While financialization may enable the capitalist system to monetize profits more easily, it also modifies the structure of the pyramid of money hierarchy and favors the expansion of what has been defined as ‘fictitious liquidity’ relative to bank money. In our view, this last contradiction can make capitalist economies more exposed to in-depth macro-financial instability as soon as financial turmoil emerges.