ABSTRACT
The financial sector is one of the fundamental building blocks for the global capitalist economy. It plays a critical role as the provider of money and credit for new investment and ultimately economic growth but, at the same time, as the recent financial crisis has demonstrated, it is also prone to considerable volatility. This volatility appears to have been accentuated in recent years by the revolution in information technology and the development of an increasingly globally integrated economy. These factors have together resulted in a situation of financial hypermobility, whereby billions of dollars are traded instantaneously within and between the leading financial centres on the world’s currency markets. For all this, geography still matters in understanding the workings of money and finance. The
Chapter map We begin the chapter with a discussion of the role and functions of money; before moving on to explore the development of money under capitalism. We then consider the changing geographies of money and the emergence of a global financial system, emphasizing how financial globalization has accentuated patterns of geographical unevenness. The latter parts of the chapter explore the increasing tendencies towards ‘crisis’ under
development involving the increased concentration of key activities in leading financial centres, on the one hand, and the marginalization and exclusion of poorer countries and regions, on the other.
