‘FINANCIAL WATCHDOGS NEED MORE BITE TO BRING SHADOW BANKING TO HEEL’

FESSUD in the press – The Guardian

British national newspaper The Guardian issued an article on the necessity for policy makers to take action “to limit damage from a financial crash” with reference to FESSUD.

A few days after the FESSUD workshop ‘Mapping the Future of Finance‘, this article comes back to the FESSUD study entitled “The future expansion and proliferation of finance”, which analyses the opinion of experts about the expected evolution of some relevant features of the financialisation process in the near future (i.e. 2025):

More than 90% of the 50 experts polled for the EU-funded Financialisation, Economy, Society and Sustainable Development (FESSUD) research project said that the benefits of finance were either overestimated or highly overestimated. They said the excessive size of the finance sector and poor regulation were the causes of the last crash. More than 70% said the flawed economic theory that underpinned a belief in financial systems as self-correcting was another factor.

 

These economists are not from the Corbyn/Sanders wing of academia. Some advise finance firms and even sit on bank advisory boards. Nevertheless, they believe the financial services sector will continue to grow, providing investors with risky profits, while the benefits for Europe’s citizens are “limited and likely negative”.