ABSTRACT
The chapter reviews the specific trajectories of the process of financialization of each Southern European economy, to explore commonalities and specificities, and their possible link with the evolution of the economy. Concerning chronology, in reconstructing the relations between centre and periphery after the Second World War, it should be recalled that all the countries of the Southern European periphery can be defined as latecomers, although Italy embarked on a path of industrialization and integration into European trade earlier than all the other peripheral countries. The different transitions to tertiarization may be better understood by analysing the specific circumstances leading, in each country, to a halt in the industrialization process. The Mezzogiorno industrialization process was interrupted when a selective investment effort was needed to upgrade products and processes. The significant and growing imbalances in the current account, which had such detrimental effect on Greece, would have been impossible without financialization's global onslaught.
