Scott Aquanno is assistant professor of political Science at Ontario Tech University. He is the coauthor of The Fall and Rise of American Finance: From J. P. Morgan to BlackRock with Stephen Maher and author of Crisis of Risk: Subprime Debt and US Financial Power from 1944 to Present.
Globalization is a project of class war whose destructive effects have driven many US workers into the Trumpian right. The Left needs a real response to the problems raised by global capital mobility — and that should start with capital controls.
Analysts of financialization often present it as a sign of capitalist decline, yet the rise of finance has actually strengthened capitalist domination. The only way to challenge this power is by converting finance into a public utility.
Finance’s dominance over the economy isn’t a deviant evolution of a “good” industrial capitalism. Finance and industry are interdependent — meaning solving problems like inequality and climate change will require a far-reaching democratization of the economy.