Financial Governmentality: Wealth-Effect as a Practice of Social Control

Contemporary capitalism is characterized by an accumulation regime whose main tendency is to incorporate every aspect of individual as well as social experiences into valorization circuits. The means through which such an internalization occurs do not only include economic policies of neoliberal inspiration, but also the wealth-effect, namely a command device aimed at governing contemporary subjectivity. In order to shed light on the shaping function performed by markets' speculation, the chapter frames the process of financialization as a practice of social control. In particular, we focus on one of the unprecedented characters of neoliberal financialization, namely its need for mass participation, its apparent democratic stance. To further articulate this line of research, we will firstly borrow a few categories from Michel Foucault, especially biopolitics and governmentality (§2). We suggest that already in Foucault's ouvre a few useful elements for reflecting on financialization as a governmental device are detectable; furthermore, such elements are of primary relevance from the perspective of monetary policy (§3). Subsequently, we shall adapt Foucauldian categories to our object of analysis, concentrating on the role that the wealth-effect assumes in the financialization process (§4). We shall then illustrate the role played by monetary policy within the circuits of the current accumulation regime (§5). Finally, we shall advance our reading of the successive shifts from the New Economy to the contemporary Great Recession (§6).