Digitalized Finance: Financial Capitalism and Informational Revolution (Studies in Critical Social Sciences)

Description

In Digitalized Finance, Edemilson Paraná investigates the relationship between the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and the process of financialization of economies on a global scale, particularly in Brazil. The book explains the influence of ICT in the emergence and consolidation, especially from the 1980s, of new forms of operation and management of the globalized financial system, highly connected, operated in "real time" with intensive use of technological features, and how these advances are related with the economic and social changes in question. It also describes how contemporary capital markets work, where the search for earnings is leveraged by sophisticated mathematical models, robots and automated trading software that seek financial gains in the milliseconds scale. Contents About Digitalized Finance ix Alfredo Saad-Filho; Leda Paulani Foreword xi Maria de Lourdes Rollemberg Mollo Preface xiii Luiz Gonzaga de Mello Belluzzo Acknowledgements xix List of Illustrations xx List of Abbreviations xxi 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Methodological Considerations 15 2 Capitalism at the Beginning of the 21st Century: Globalized Finance 18 2.1 A Brief Review of the Theories of Financialization 18 2.2 Interest-Bearing Capital and Fictitious Capital 23 2.3 Globalization of Capital: Neoliberalism and Finance-dominated Accumulation Regime 29 3 Technics, Capital and Society: The Material Bases of Technological Development 40 3.1 Investigating the Technological Practice from Its Social Content 40 3.2 Technological Development and Financialization of the Economy: Theoretical Starting Points 50 4 Digitalized Finance: Informatization at the Service of Financial Dominance 60 4.1 The State of the Art of Digitalized Finance at the Beginning of the 21st Century 60 4.2 The Consequences of Digitalization in the Capitals Markets 77 4.3 Recent Trends: The Next Steps for Digitalized Finance 101 5 Digitalized Finance in the Brazilian Context 105 5.1 A Brief Overview of the Technical-Operational Development of the Capitals Market in Brazil 112 5.2 The Development of the ICT and the Transformations of the Brazilian Capitals Market: Elective Affinities 129 6 Final Considerations 143 References 149 Index 157