Number crunching: financialization and spatial strategies of risk organization

Wainwright, Thomas (2012) Number crunching: financialization and spatial strategies of risk organization. Journal of Economic Geography, 12 (6), 1267-1291. (doi:10.1093/jeg/lbs003).

Record type: Article

Abstract

The emergence of the credit crunch, as a consequence of the US subprime crisis, has received considerable attention by economic geographers and social scientists. Despite this, contemporary narratives have principally focused on the global geography of the credit crunch, leading to a dearth of studies on other geographical scales, particularly regional spaces. This article seeks to address this gap by examining how regional spaces and financial institutions were reconfigured through the politics of financialization throughout the 1990s, which stimulated the adoption of inherently spatial strategies, connecting them to global markets, to increase shareholder value. It is argued in this article that these politics and strategies contributed to the vulnerability of these ‘traditional’ regional banks during the British financial crisis. Furthermore, it provides an insight into how financial elites generated trans-local networks that facilitated the financialization of regional housing markets in the UK.

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