Financialisation of infrastructure

Increasingly many aspects of our lives are becoming financialised. The development of markets around essential services and natural commodities has reshaped the world economy and is putting finance firmly at its centre. The markets spawned by this process offer a perplexing selection of financial products all designed to generate wealth from the instrument far beyond the initial value of the product or service. The drive towards the financialisation of the wider economy is synonymous with more privatisation of public services and the transfer of power over the economy to financial institutions, trans-national corporations and markets. That results in effective make-up for the instruments and mechanisms of indebtedness, whose real cost is strategically hidden.