Portside

This is the heart of the new financialism and it is happening all over the country. If this were just one isolated case, we could probably live with it. It might even lead to a new law that would outlaw Ackman's outrageous behavior. But this kind of de-creative destruction is now a central feature of our new financialized economy. It is now routine for big-time investors to make bets against companies and then try to bring those companies down using a variety of tactics.

These are the first two parts of a four-part interview with Costas Lapavitsas focusing on the Era of Financialization and the transformations at the “molecular” level of capitalism that are driving changes in economic performance and policy in both high-income and developing countries. Lapavitsas is a professor of economics at SOAS, University of London, and the author of Financialised Capitalism: Expansion and Crisis (Maia Ediciones, 2009)