Fringe Finance

Download or read book Fringe Finance written by Rob Aitken and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-02-11 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most recent conversations about financial instability in International Political Economy have addressed the ongoing financial spasms of the past five years; a global financial spasm unleashed by the 2008 subprime debacle, ongoing Eurozone instability, and general price volatility in securities markets globally. Alongside and as part of these broader spasms, however, has been another key trend—the intensifying reach of global financial markets into and among those populations which live at its very edges. There are increasing, and increasingly profitable, experiments which are explicitly targeted to those without regular access to full or formalized financial practices. This book places the practices of fringe finance in critical context by situating them within a larger set of discussions in the field. Most importantly, this book is part of a much broader attempt in IPE to rethread the study of finance to questions of cultural and social theory in a meaningful manner. Finance is increasingly subjected to innovative forms of social inquiry influenced by a range of diverse methods including governmentality, actor-network theory and cultural economy. By drawing on several strands of social theory, this book contributes to this broader movement in IPE and helps open more space for the continuation of these interdisciplinary conversations. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of IPE, development studies and economic sociology.

Download or read book City of Debtors written by Anne Fleming and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-08 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the rise of the small-sum lending industry in the 1890s, people on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder in the United States have been asked to pay the greatest price for credit. Again and again, Americans have asked why the most fragile borrowers face the highest costs for access to the smallest loans. To protect low-wage workers in need of credit, reformers have repeatedly turned to law, only to face the vexing question of where to draw the line between necessary protection and overreaching paternalism. City of Debtors shows how each generation of Americans has tackled the problem of fringe finance, using law to redefine the meaning of justice within capitalism for those on the economic margins. Anne Fleming tells the story of the small-sum lending industry’s growth and regulation from the ground up, following the people who navigated the market for small loans and those who shaped its development at the state and local level. Fleming’s focus on the city and state of New York, which served as incubators for numerous lending reforms that later spread throughout the nation, differentiates her approach from work that has centered on federal regulation. It also reveals the overlooked challenges of governing a modern financial industry within a federalist framework. Fleming’s detailed work contributes to the broader and ongoing debate about the meaning of justice within capitalistic societies, by exploring the fault line in the landscape of capitalism where poverty, the welfare state, and consumer credit converge.

Download or read book Fringe Banking in Winnipeg's North End written by Jerry Buckland and published by Canadian Centre Policy Alternatives. This book was released on 2005 with total page 55 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The geographic boundaries of the North End, as determined by the North End Community Renewal Corporation, is north of the CPR tracks, south of Caruthers Avenue, east of McPhillips Street, and west of the Red River. [...] This 5 In his examination of fringe banking in the US, Caskey (1994, p. 84) argues that a chief reason for their rise is the increase in the number of households without bank accounts, rising from 9.5% of the US population in 1977 to 13.5% in 1989, the result of processes affecting banks (supply side) and bank clients (demand side). [...] The second focus credit risk related to high levels of debt-servicing and personal bankruptcy; the contraction in the bank and finance company supply of non-revolving, unsecured loans; the growing numbers of people with higher credit risk due to increased legal and illegal immigration to the US; the increase in gold prices; the growing awareness among entrepreneurs of the profits in fringe banking [...] Winnipeg and the 16.5% of the population of the North End, North End both have around 13.5% of comprise a smaller percentage at 11.9% their population over the age of retire- of the population of Winnipeg. [...] This is sub- the number of people contributing income stantially higher than the 35% average in to a household, the greater the likelihood the rest of Winnipeg.

Download or read book Hard Choices written by Jerry Buckland and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2012-03-30 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When low-income city dwellers lack access to mainstream banking services, many end up turning to 'fringe banks,' such as cheque-cashers and pawnshops, for some or all of their financial transactions. This predicament of 'financial exclusion' - faced by those underserved by conventional financial institutions - is comprehensively examined in Jerry Buckland's powerful study, Hard Choices. The first account of the nature and causes of financial exclusion in Canada, Hard Choices thoroughly integrates economic and social data on consumer choice, bank behaviour, and government policy. Buckland demonstrates why the current two-tier system of banking is becoming increasingly dysfunctional, especially in the context of new credit products that aggravate income inequality and stifle local economic growth. Featuring a foreword by esteemed economics scholar John P. Caskey, Hard Choices presents pragmatic policy improvements on both the public and private levels that can promote and build financial inclusion for all.

Download or read book The Global Financial Crisis and Its Aftermath written by A.G. Malliaris and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 521 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Global Financial Crisis, contributors argue that the complexity of the Global Financial Crisis challenges researchers to offer more comprehensive explanations by extending the scope and range of their traditional investigations. To achieve this, the volume views the financial crisis simultaneously through three different lenses---economic, psychological, and social values. Contributors offer a constructive methodology suitable for exploring financial crises. They recognize how current economic analysis did not prepare academic economists, business economists, traders, and regulators to anticipate economic and financial crises. So, they search more extensively within the broader discipline of economics for ideas related to crises but neglected perhaps because they were not mathematically rigorous. They affirm that the complexity of financial crises necessitates complementary research. Thus, to put the focal purpose of this book differently, they explore the Global Financial Crisis from three interconnected frameworks: the standards of orthodox economic analysis, Minskyan economics, and the role of ideas and values in economics. Values are the subject of both philosophy and psychology and can contribute to a better understanding of the Global Financial Crisis. Values, in general, have been relatively neglected by economists. This is not because there is doubt about their significance, but rather because welfare economics and collective choice still operate within the neoclassical paradigm. This volume argues that analyzing the value implications requires moving from the neoclassical framework to something that is broader and multidisciplinary.

Download or read book Shortchanged written by Howard Jacob Karger and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2005-09-01 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An eye-opening read in the school of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel & Dimed . . . shines a bright light on the economy’s darker side.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) Drive through a low-income neighborhood and you’re likely to see streets lined with pawnshops, check cashers, rent-to-own stores, payday and tax refund lenders, auto title pawns, and buy-here-pay-here used car lots. We’re awash in “alternative financial services” directed at the poor and those with credit problems. Howard Karger describes this world as an economic Wild West, where just about any financial scheme that’s not patently illegal is tolerated. Taking a hard look at this fringe economy, Karger shows that what seem to be small, independent storefront operations are actually part of a fully-formed parallel economy dominated by a handful of well-financed corporations, subject to little or no oversight, with increasingly strong ties to mainstream financial institutions. It is a hidden world, Karger writes, where a customer’s economic fate is sealed with a handshake, a smile, and a stack of fine print documents that would befuddle many attorneys. Filled with heartbreaking stories of real people trapped in perpetual debt, Shortchanged exposes the deceptive practices that allow these businesses to prey on people when they are most vulnerable. Karger reveals the many ways this industry has run amok, ruining countless people’s lives, and shows that it’s not just the poor but, more and more, maxed-out middle class consumers who fall prey to these devious schemes. Balancing compassion with a realistic awareness of the risks any business faces in working with an economically distressed clientele, Karger details hard-headed, practical recommendations for reforming this predatory industry.

Download or read book The Everyday Life of Global Finance written by Paul Langley and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-05-08 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the US and UK, saving and borrowing routines have changed radically and become closely bound-up with the capital markets of global finance. As mutual funds have increased in popularity and pension provision has been transformed, many more individuals and households have come to invest in stocks and shares. As consumer borrowing has risen dramatically and mortgage finance has been extended to those deemed sub-prime, so the repayments of credit card holders and mortgagors have provided the basis for the issue and trading of bonds and other market instruments. The Everyday Life of Global Finance explores the unprecedented relationships that now bind society and the markets, challenging the dominant tendency to simply position recent developments in Wall Street and the City of London at the centre of contemporary finance. Grounded in literature from the sociology of finance and international political economy, drawing on the social theory of Callon, Foucault, and Latour, and informed by extensive empirical research, the book shows how global finance has become mundane and ordinary in Anglo-America. Finance is not 'out there somewhere', but is embedded in the calculative technologies and performances of reconfigured saving and borrowing networks, and is embodied through the assembly of everyday financial identities and self-disciplines. Society's new-found relationships with the financial markets are also shown, however, to be marked by stark inequalities, manifest contradictions, and political dissent. The Everyday Life of Global Finance is thus an ambitious and innovative contribution to our understanding of the contemporary financial world.