Your Money or Your Life!

FINANCIAL GLOBALISATION/53

Finally, Table 4.1 suggests that speculative operations easily
account for more than 90 per cent of the value of daily financial
transactions.

Table 4.1 Daily value of financial transactions and the total annual
value of global exports (Sbn)

A = annual value of daily financial transactions on exchange
markets (daily transactions x 250 business days)
B = total annual value of global exports

Year A B B/A (%)

1979 18,750 1,546 8.25

1984 37,500 1,800 4.80

1986 75,000 1,998 6.7

1990 125,000 3,429 2.66

1994 300,000 4,269 1.42

Source: table assembledby Robert Went (199 6, p. 13), based on figures from
Piot (1995, pp. 38-9).

The financial markets handle the billions and billions of dollars in

capital that move from one country to another everyday. As a

result, they have become the policeman, judge and jury of the

world economy, which is very worrying given their tendency to see

events and policies through the distorting prism of fear and greed.

(Financial Times, 30 September 1994).

Of course, the journalistic musings of the Financial Times do not go
far enough. It is significant in itself, however, that such comments
should appear in the flagship British financial daily, front-line
defender of the capitalist system. It shows that the heads of the main
capitalist countries (the G 7 or G10) and private financial institutions

• with multinational industrial houses, the IMF, World Bank, BIS
  and GATT in tow - have, to a certain extent, played the role of
  sorcerer's apprentices. This is why the image of a pilot whose controls
  do not respond is so apt.
  The over-accumulation of capital has been accompanied by a real
  or potential (in terms of excess productive capacity) overproduction