POLS 196 Lecture Notes - Lecture 23: Commodity Market, Futures Contract, Financialization

• School: University of Vermont
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POLS 196
• Professor: Bradley Bauerly

Document Summary

Financialization: increasing role of financial motives, markets, actors and institutions in the operation of domestic and global economies: pattern of accumulation in which profit making occurs increasingly through financial. Increasing political and economic power of the rentier class channels rather than through trade and commodity production. Increasingly, profits in the us come primarily through financial channels, rather than trade or production of goods and services: even true for non-financial firms with the growth of stock buybacks taking place. Causes of financialization: convergence of policies focusing on financial firms: neo regulation, policy rivalry among national governments. Competitive deregulation: constituency politics at the domestic levels, globalization of production. Ideological shifts towards neoliberal individualism and away from state intermediation. Commodity derivatives: commodity contracts that have commodities underlying them: most important type is futures contracts. Derivative: financial contract that derives its value from an underlying asset: the main types are futures, options and swaps.