Week 2: My reflection on Scott's "The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance"

With a background in international relations and communication, I am interested in the inter-relations among global economy (e.g. commodity export; multi-national & transnational businesses; global asset investments; and debts), politics, and cultural hegemony. As the world becomes more immersed in the process of globalization, it is impossible to only diagnose a certain issue only within its local or even regional context; instead I want to take the issue further to its global context by looking at the interplay of different dimensions of human activities in order to gain a better understanding of these phenomena. I believe this course will provide some valuable insights to my interest by crystallizing the concepts of global finance and its technical components. 

In Scott B’s (2013) article, he expressed some of the common concerns in regards to the global finance. He concludes that financialization, complexity, unethical investment and toxic culture are some of the misconceptions held by the public (23-28). The term of financialization, he argues, should not be understood as the take over of the powerful financial institutions; instead, we are all involved in the process of financialization to some degree. For instance, if a business owner takes out a loan from his local bank, or someone invests in stocks, bonds, etc.  Secondly, the public sees the global economy as a complex and opaque world in which finance institutions are well connected. Then there is the worry of the ethical practice and the risks these agents take in order to accumulate wealth. The fact that these financial institutions can be seen as working together as parts on a chain is perhaps questionable in his eye. Lastly, the toxic culture of the industry as portrayed in the media and especially the notorious vivid images through visual means such as films is the most direct information we perceive on a regular basis. It seems like he was going to re-adjust these perceptions in later chapters but I believe he also comes from a different perspective or tradition when he looks at these institutions as the public might have taken on a different angle. It is true that we can easily misperceive the money market and the agents participating in the process of financialization as what it really is. But who is it to define how we should really look at it after all the crises that put millions of people in financial troubles? After all, the people who work inside the industry do not share the same opinion with the outsides as they have completely different or even opposite agenda in their life. For instance, one must wants to make good amount of money in order to work under the tremendous amount of pressure in the banking industry and he or she obviously would not be complaining about how unethical or opaque the business operations are. To the contrary, the outsider tends to criticize it because he doesn't profit from it and in fact he might be the victim of the economy ran under these institutions. Therefore, I find his idea of these misconception equally hard to accept. However, as I have not finished his whole book, I am going to keep an open mind to what he really intend to communicate.