ABSTRACT
With the ICT revolution, a global financial economy is spreading across the world to provide new avenues for financial capital accumulation. Leveraging growth by debts is its principal characteristic feature. Rising capital intensity, redistribution of incomes favouring the rentier, and leveraging take place as complementary processes. A digitalised global financial web with intricate linkages is born, making money digitalised in the virtual plane. As illustrated in the chart provided in the chapter, there is now a single global economic circuit replacing the earlier country-specific circuits, where money or foreign exchange no longer appears. Government and common households’ debt appear as liabilities counterbalancing the corporate sector’s and HNIs’ wealth or net worth as assets, as could be conceived in a global balance sheet. Several conclusions emerge, like financial growth necessarily causes stagnation in the real sector and redistribution of incomes; the more the indebtedness the faster the growth; the fragile circuit thrives on financial asset price bubbles; and the money-hungry circuit squeezes all incomes and savings that may still lie outside the circuit. The circuit appears to be a closed one, but, in fact, opens to the future – all expected future earning flows are brought into the present for its growth.
