Michael Rafferty
Biographic Data
| ID | 91047 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael Rafferty |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael |
| FAMILY NAME | Rafferty |
| SIGNATURE | RAFFERTY M |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Sydney |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2732-3232 |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 221 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Captured: How neoliberalism transformed the Australian state
Four decades ago, faced with a series of economic, political and social crises, business and government leaders in Australia and many other nations were convinced by a well organised ideological insurgency of the need for what at first was presented as a series of technical changes in economic policy. However, neoliberalism quickly became a revolutionary agenda for re-ordering the social democratic state. Captured: How neoliberalism transformed t…
Relational Urbanisation, Resilience, Revolution: Beirut as a Relational City
The destruction of Beirut’s port and large areas of the inner city following the August 2020 explosion occurred amid (and has exacerbated) an unprecedented national economic and social crisis portending another potential phase of urban “reconstruction” and a national political revolution. Critical scholars have highlighted the shortcomings of urban planning and governance in the city after the Lebanese civil war, particularly in terms of housing,…
Relational Cities Disrupted: Reflections on the Particular Geographies of Covid‐19 For Small But Global Urbanisation in Dublin, Ireland, and Luxembourg City, Luxembourg
This paper looks at the particular geographies associated with the COVID‐19 outbreak through the lens of cities that are products of relational urbanisation. This includes small but highly globalised cities, such as financial centres or hot spots of politics and diplomacy, which are usually situated between different political, economic or cultural systems and their boundaries. These cities experienced strong growth due to internationalisation an…
La sous-traitance comme forme contemporaine d’exploitation: Les cas de l’Afrique du Sud, de l’Australie et de la France
La sous-traitance peut être analysée comme une forme contemporaine de l’extraction du surtravail qui met en œuvre le principe de la dépendance économique au niveau des relations inter-entreprises. Elle contribue à contourner le droit du travail et à transférer un ensemble de risques des employeurs vers les travailleurs. À travers les cas du secteur forestier en Afrique du Sud, du secteur de la construction en Australie et d’une analyse intersecto…
Capital unchained: Finance, intangible assets and the double life of capital in the offshore world
The rise of intangible assets such as brand names, research and development, patents and other forms of abstract capital such as digital platforms and data flows has confounded extant measures and concepts of capital and accumulation. What used to be a residual asset category known as ‘goodwill’ has now overtaken so-called fixed or tangible assets in the profitability and valuation of many leading corporations. Yet these intangible assets lead a …
Reframing austerity: Financial Morality, Savings and Securitization
Austerity in the twenty-first century is different, compared both with the past, and across locations. This analysis explores the different role played by households in policies designed to maintain financial market liquidity in the context of aspirations of state deficit reduction. While in Europe there is austerity as popularly depicted, in the United States, where mortgage-backed securities have become central to monetary policy, the agenda is…
Politics, time and space in the era of shadow banking
In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, there has been an understandable focus on the financial fragility and contagion aspects of shadow banking. This article argues that shadow banking is important for another set of reasons. It has been well established that shadow banking permits the transformation of assets and financial claims. It has also been established that fiscal and regulatory arbitrage occurs through shadow banking, and associate…
The unaccountable risks of Libor
One of the on-going consequences of recent financial crises seems to be that the conventional 'anchor' measures of global finance (such as the US dollar, treasury bonds and AAA rated securities) are no longer playing the anchoring role once believed of them. LIBOR now needs to be added to this list and not just because it has been tarnished by illegal practices, but because it is looking increasingly surpassed by financial market practices. LIBOR…
Decomposing Money: Ontological options and spreads
Debates about the nature and origin of the social foundations of money can have no closure. There is a range of credible, but sometimes inconsistent, positions. This paper conjectures that the framing of debates is itself precluding the recognition that these ‘foundations’ are themselves conjuncturally specific. At critical historical points of monetary crisis or innovation, it is the divergence between theories that gives analytical potence, for…
Risk and Value: Finance, Labor, and Production
The process of financialization of accumulation brings to the fore the issue of risk and risk trading. This article explores the way finance and risk relate to capital accumulation and how risk might be integrated into Marxian value theory. It looks first at what it would mean to incorporate risk into conventional measurements of value and then opens up alternative ways of thinking about the process of production, to recognize frontier developmen…
Shoplifters of the World Unite! Law and Culture in Financialized Times
The last two decades have seen significant growth and change in the character of the interactions between working-class households and financial markets. Individuals and households are bearing more and more of the risks that were once managed by governments and employers, and financial markets have developed a vast range of products to facilitate that risk transfer. This has put households at the centre of financial innovation, requiring the exte…
Financial Derivatives as Social Policy beyond Crisis
The period since the global financial crisis has seen financial derivatives not only grow quantitatively in financial markets but also expand socially as a calculative logic, giving increasing precision to the concept of capital and hence class relations. The logic of derivatives involves deconstructing 'things' into a spectrum of tradable risks. The article identifies the ways in which this logic is spreading into an increasing range of social, …
Fundamental value: A Category in Transformation
Fundamental value is a canonical category in both Marxian and neo-classical economics. In application to finance and financial crisis, it is laden with complexity. For Marxists, it has underscored a focus on the distinctions between production and circulation, real and fictitious capital. These debates have dominated Marxian responses to the financial crisis. In mainstream finance and economics, the term has undergone transformation and historica…
Why We Need to Understand Derivatives in Relation to Money: A Reply to Tony Norfield
The issue of the relation between financial derivatives, money and crisis remains one of on-going debate within Marxism. This paper takes issue with a recent contribution to this debate by Tony Norfield. We contend that the relationship between financial derivatives and the concept of ‘money’ needs to be framed in the context of a changing understanding of liquidity, and that issues of crisis and renewed accumulation are better understood though …
Banks and Swedish financial crises in the 1920s and 1930s
Financial crises occur at regular and unpredictable moments in capitalist economies. However, an absence of shared theoretical approaches to and even definitions of the subject still plague the analysis of financial crises. This situation makes historical analysis even more important. This article compares two Swedish financial crises, one in the 1920s and the other in the 1930s. The comparison shows that despite their temporal and spatial proxim…
Financial derivatives and the theory of money
Financial derivatives are used and counted as money, but it is unclear exactly what sort of money they are. This article explores the monetary role of financial derivatives in securing the global financial system. It finds that derivatives commensurate the values of different forms of financial assets, and, in the process, they facilitate continuity across different forms of money. In this role they are a form of commodity money, but very differe…
Derivatives and the Development of Capitalist Relations
In earlier chapters, we identified the growth of financial derivatives, and especially their generalised use by large corporations for risk management, as an emerging and decisive change in capitalist development. We contended that the growth of financial derivatives in the 1980s is akin to the watershed created by the growth of joint stock companies in the middle-to-late nineteenth century. Derivatives are transforming our understanding of capit…
Capitalism with Derivatives: A Political Economy of Financial Derivatives, Capital and Class
What are the links between things as diverse as the prices of pork bellies, interest rates, and corporate stock? They are all being translated into risk and priced through the system of derivative mar
Money in Capitalism or Capitalist Money
The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an immense collection of commodities
Still calling Australia home? International integration and the framing of national economic problems in recent official reports
Soviet health care and perestroika
Health and health care in the Soviet Union are drawing special attention during these first years of perestroika, Mikhail Gorbachev's reform of Soviet political and economic life. This report briefly describes the current state of Soviet health and medical care, Gorbachev's plans for reform, and the prospects for success. In recent years the Soviet Union has experienced a rising infant mortality rate and declining life expectancy. The health care…
Inhibition of human neutrophil 5-lipoxygenase activity by gingerdione, shogaol, capsaicin and related pungent compounds
Financial Derivatives as Social Policy beyond Crisis
The period since the global financial crisis has seen financial derivatives not only grow quantitatively in financial markets but also expand socially as a calculative logic, giving increasing precision to the concept of capital and hence class relations. The logic of derivatives involves deconstructing 'things' into a spectrum of tradable risks. The article identifies the ways in which this logic is spreading into an increasing range of social, …
Financial derivatives and the theory of money
Financial derivatives are used and counted as money, but it is unclear exactly what sort of money they are. This article explores the monetary role of financial derivatives in securing the global financial system. It finds that derivatives commensurate the values of different forms of financial assets, and, in the process, they facilitate continuity across different forms of money. In this role they are a form of commodity money, but very differe…
Capital unchained: Finance, intangible assets and the double life of capital in the offshore world
The rise of intangible assets such as brand names, research and development, patents and other forms of abstract capital such as digital platforms and data flows has confounded extant measures and concepts of capital and accumulation. What used to be a residual asset category known as ‘goodwill’ has now overtaken so-called fixed or tangible assets in the profitability and valuation of many leading corporations. Yet these intangible assets lead a …
Politics, time and space in the era of shadow banking
In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, there has been an understandable focus on the financial fragility and contagion aspects of shadow banking. This article argues that shadow banking is important for another set of reasons. It has been well established that shadow banking permits the transformation of assets and financial claims. It has also been established that fiscal and regulatory arbitrage occurs through shadow banking, and associate…
Fundamental value: A Category in Transformation
Fundamental value is a canonical category in both Marxian and neo-classical economics. In application to finance and financial crisis, it is laden with complexity. For Marxists, it has underscored a focus on the distinctions between production and circulation, real and fictitious capital. These debates have dominated Marxian responses to the financial crisis. In mainstream finance and economics, the term has undergone transformation and historica…
Risk and Value: Finance, Labor, and Production
The process of financialization of accumulation brings to the fore the issue of risk and risk trading. This article explores the way finance and risk relate to capital accumulation and how risk might be integrated into Marxian value theory. It looks first at what it would mean to incorporate risk into conventional measurements of value and then opens up alternative ways of thinking about the process of production, to recognize frontier developmen…
Relational Cities Disrupted: Reflections on the Particular Geographies of Covid‐19 For Small But Global Urbanisation in Dublin, Ireland, and Luxembourg City, Luxembourg
This paper looks at the particular geographies associated with the COVID‐19 outbreak through the lens of cities that are products of relational urbanisation. This includes small but highly globalised cities, such as financial centres or hot spots of politics and diplomacy, which are usually situated between different political, economic or cultural systems and their boundaries. These cities experienced strong growth due to internationalisation an…
Soviet health care and perestroika
Health and health care in the Soviet Union are drawing special attention during these first years of perestroika, Mikhail Gorbachev's reform of Soviet political and economic life. This report briefly describes the current state of Soviet health and medical care, Gorbachev's plans for reform, and the prospects for success. In recent years the Soviet Union has experienced a rising infant mortality rate and declining life expectancy. The health care…
The unaccountable risks of Libor
One of the on-going consequences of recent financial crises seems to be that the conventional 'anchor' measures of global finance (such as the US dollar, treasury bonds and AAA rated securities) are no longer playing the anchoring role once believed of them. LIBOR now needs to be added to this list and not just because it has been tarnished by illegal practices, but because it is looking increasingly surpassed by financial market practices. LIBOR…
Decomposing Money: Ontological options and spreads
Debates about the nature and origin of the social foundations of money can have no closure. There is a range of credible, but sometimes inconsistent, positions. This paper conjectures that the framing of debates is itself precluding the recognition that these ‘foundations’ are themselves conjuncturally specific. At critical historical points of monetary crisis or innovation, it is the divergence between theories that gives analytical potence, for…
Why We Need to Understand Derivatives in Relation to Money: A Reply to Tony Norfield
The issue of the relation between financial derivatives, money and crisis remains one of on-going debate within Marxism. This paper takes issue with a recent contribution to this debate by Tony Norfield. We contend that the relationship between financial derivatives and the concept of ‘money’ needs to be framed in the context of a changing understanding of liquidity, and that issues of crisis and renewed accumulation are better understood though …
Reframing austerity: Financial Morality, Savings and Securitization
Austerity in the twenty-first century is different, compared both with the past, and across locations. This analysis explores the different role played by households in policies designed to maintain financial market liquidity in the context of aspirations of state deficit reduction. While in Europe there is austerity as popularly depicted, in the United States, where mortgage-backed securities have become central to monetary policy, the agenda is…
Banks and Swedish financial crises in the 1920s and 1930s
Financial crises occur at regular and unpredictable moments in capitalist economies. However, an absence of shared theoretical approaches to and even definitions of the subject still plague the analysis of financial crises. This situation makes historical analysis even more important. This article compares two Swedish financial crises, one in the 1920s and the other in the 1930s. The comparison shows that despite their temporal and spatial proxim…
Money in Capitalism or Capitalist Money
The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an immense collection of commodities
Inhibition of human neutrophil 5-lipoxygenase activity by gingerdione, shogaol, capsaicin and related pungent compounds
Soviet health care and perestroika
Health and health care in the Soviet Union are drawing special attention during these first years of perestroika, Mikhail Gorbachev's reform of Soviet political and economic life. This report briefly describes the current state of Soviet health and medical care, Gorbachev's plans for reform, and the prospects for success. In recent years the Soviet Union has experienced a rising infant mortality rate and declining life expectancy. The health care…
Still calling Australia home? International integration and the framing of national economic problems in recent official reports
Derivatives and the Development of Capitalist Relations
In earlier chapters, we identified the growth of financial derivatives, and especially their generalised use by large corporations for risk management, as an emerging and decisive change in capitalist development. We contended that the growth of financial derivatives in the 1980s is akin to the watershed created by the growth of joint stock companies in the middle-to-late nineteenth century. Derivatives are transforming our understanding of capit…
Capitalism with Derivatives: A Political Economy of Financial Derivatives, Capital and Class
What are the links between things as diverse as the prices of pork bellies, interest rates, and corporate stock? They are all being translated into risk and priced through the system of derivative mar
Money in Capitalism or Capitalist Money
The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an immense collection of commodities
Financial derivatives and the theory of money
Financial derivatives are used and counted as money, but it is unclear exactly what sort of money they are. This article explores the monetary role of financial derivatives in securing the global financial system. It finds that derivatives commensurate the values of different forms of financial assets, and, in the process, they facilitate continuity across different forms of money. In this role they are a form of commodity money, but very differe…
Banks and Swedish financial crises in the 1920s and 1930s
Financial crises occur at regular and unpredictable moments in capitalist economies. However, an absence of shared theoretical approaches to and even definitions of the subject still plague the analysis of financial crises. This situation makes historical analysis even more important. This article compares two Swedish financial crises, one in the 1920s and the other in the 1930s. The comparison shows that despite their temporal and spatial proxim…
Why We Need to Understand Derivatives in Relation to Money: A Reply to Tony Norfield
The issue of the relation between financial derivatives, money and crisis remains one of on-going debate within Marxism. This paper takes issue with a recent contribution to this debate by Tony Norfield. We contend that the relationship between financial derivatives and the concept of ‘money’ needs to be framed in the context of a changing understanding of liquidity, and that issues of crisis and renewed accumulation are better understood though …
Fundamental value: A Category in Transformation
Fundamental value is a canonical category in both Marxian and neo-classical economics. In application to finance and financial crisis, it is laden with complexity. For Marxists, it has underscored a focus on the distinctions between production and circulation, real and fictitious capital. These debates have dominated Marxian responses to the financial crisis. In mainstream finance and economics, the term has undergone transformation and historica…
Shoplifters of the World Unite! Law and Culture in Financialized Times
The last two decades have seen significant growth and change in the character of the interactions between working-class households and financial markets. Individuals and households are bearing more and more of the risks that were once managed by governments and employers, and financial markets have developed a vast range of products to facilitate that risk transfer. This has put households at the centre of financial innovation, requiring the exte…
Financial Derivatives as Social Policy beyond Crisis
The period since the global financial crisis has seen financial derivatives not only grow quantitatively in financial markets but also expand socially as a calculative logic, giving increasing precision to the concept of capital and hence class relations. The logic of derivatives involves deconstructing 'things' into a spectrum of tradable risks. The article identifies the ways in which this logic is spreading into an increasing range of social, …
Risk and Value: Finance, Labor, and Production
The process of financialization of accumulation brings to the fore the issue of risk and risk trading. This article explores the way finance and risk relate to capital accumulation and how risk might be integrated into Marxian value theory. It looks first at what it would mean to incorporate risk into conventional measurements of value and then opens up alternative ways of thinking about the process of production, to recognize frontier developmen…
Politics, time and space in the era of shadow banking
In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, there has been an understandable focus on the financial fragility and contagion aspects of shadow banking. This article argues that shadow banking is important for another set of reasons. It has been well established that shadow banking permits the transformation of assets and financial claims. It has also been established that fiscal and regulatory arbitrage occurs through shadow banking, and associate…
The unaccountable risks of Libor
One of the on-going consequences of recent financial crises seems to be that the conventional 'anchor' measures of global finance (such as the US dollar, treasury bonds and AAA rated securities) are no longer playing the anchoring role once believed of them. LIBOR now needs to be added to this list and not just because it has been tarnished by illegal practices, but because it is looking increasingly surpassed by financial market practices. LIBOR…
Decomposing Money: Ontological options and spreads
Debates about the nature and origin of the social foundations of money can have no closure. There is a range of credible, but sometimes inconsistent, positions. This paper conjectures that the framing of debates is itself precluding the recognition that these ‘foundations’ are themselves conjuncturally specific. At critical historical points of monetary crisis or innovation, it is the divergence between theories that gives analytical potence, for…
Capital unchained: Finance, intangible assets and the double life of capital in the offshore world
The rise of intangible assets such as brand names, research and development, patents and other forms of abstract capital such as digital platforms and data flows has confounded extant measures and concepts of capital and accumulation. What used to be a residual asset category known as ‘goodwill’ has now overtaken so-called fixed or tangible assets in the profitability and valuation of many leading corporations. Yet these intangible assets lead a …
Reframing austerity: Financial Morality, Savings and Securitization
Austerity in the twenty-first century is different, compared both with the past, and across locations. This analysis explores the different role played by households in policies designed to maintain financial market liquidity in the context of aspirations of state deficit reduction. While in Europe there is austerity as popularly depicted, in the United States, where mortgage-backed securities have become central to monetary policy, the agenda is…
La sous-traitance comme forme contemporaine d’exploitation: Les cas de l’Afrique du Sud, de l’Australie et de la France
La sous-traitance peut être analysée comme une forme contemporaine de l’extraction du surtravail qui met en œuvre le principe de la dépendance économique au niveau des relations inter-entreprises. Elle contribue à contourner le droit du travail et à transférer un ensemble de risques des employeurs vers les travailleurs. À travers les cas du secteur forestier en Afrique du Sud, du secteur de la construction en Australie et d’une analyse intersecto…
Relational Cities Disrupted: Reflections on the Particular Geographies of Covid‐19 For Small But Global Urbanisation in Dublin, Ireland, and Luxembourg City, Luxembourg
This paper looks at the particular geographies associated with the COVID‐19 outbreak through the lens of cities that are products of relational urbanisation. This includes small but highly globalised cities, such as financial centres or hot spots of politics and diplomacy, which are usually situated between different political, economic or cultural systems and their boundaries. These cities experienced strong growth due to internationalisation an…
Relational Urbanisation, Resilience, Revolution: Beirut as a Relational City
The destruction of Beirut’s port and large areas of the inner city following the August 2020 explosion occurred amid (and has exacerbated) an unprecedented national economic and social crisis portending another potential phase of urban “reconstruction” and a national political revolution. Critical scholars have highlighted the shortcomings of urban planning and governance in the city after the Lebanese civil war, particularly in terms of housing,…
Captured: How neoliberalism transformed the Australian state
Four decades ago, faced with a series of economic, political and social crises, business and government leaders in Australia and many other nations were convinced by a well organised ideological insurgency of the need for what at first was presented as a series of technical changes in economic policy. However, neoliberalism quickly became a revolutionary agenda for re-ordering the social democratic state. Captured: How neoliberalism transformed t…
Economics (15 works) · Political science (13 works) · Economic Theory and Policy (9 works) · Finance (8 works) · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism (8 works) · Law (6 works) · Political Economy and Marxism (6 works) · Finance (5 works) · Financial crisis (5 works) · Political economy (5 works)