ABSTRACT
Contemporary world credit practices have undergone a significant structural transformation. Alongside new disintermediated forms of credit instruments and patterns of institutionalisation, contemporary practices are subject to financialisation and marked by a distinctive spatiality that combines the asymmetrical decentralisation of practices between the principal WFCs with the emergence of offshore space. As with our inquiry into previous world financial orders, an Historical IPE approach leads us to account for contemporary credit practices by shifting our inquiry to the diachronic moment. The purpose of this chapter is, then, to consider the structure of power that has and continues to frame the possible organisation of practices.
