Globalization, Financialization and US Power

Abstract

The opening up of the Global South and associated corporate globalization was crucial in realizing the epochal changes in developed capitalism. It will be argued that the US- and US-led institutions of global economic governance played a major role in creating the new institutional infrastructure that accompanied the emergence of integrated transnational production networks and global financial markets. The United States was also a major beneficiary of the new global capitalism. Globalization led to global labor and regulatory arbitrage that kept wages low and put downward pressure on regulatory regimes. A web of tax havens, centered around New York and London, allowed multinationals and elites to avoid taxes and escape the law. Methods used in the South to open up countries for capital would later be used in developed capitalism.