by Charles Hugh Smith
Of Two Minds
Our faith in the wobbling world of hyper-financialization will soon be tested.
It’s interesting, isn’t it, that amidst a tsunami of commentary about banks, nobody mentions the proverbial elephant in the room, which is the overwhelming dominance of finance in the economy and society, a dominance which raises the big question: is the dominance of finance healthy for the economy and society?
The reason why nobody even sees this elephant is we’ve come to believe “it’s always been this way” and “this is the natural order of things.” Both are false. Yes, debt and lending have been integral to “money,” trade and civilization from the beginning, as David Graeber so memorably detailed in his book Debt: The First 5,000 Years. But essential isn’t the same as dominant.