Governors of the money system are based in, and operate from, financial centres in Singapore, Shanghai, Frankfurt, London and New York. After the 1960s, power was shifted away from elected politicians and central bank technocrats to private actors in global markets (often referred to in abstract terms as market forces, a phrase that renders both their power and actual governors invisible). Together with tame economists, weak regulators and compliant governments, Wall Street elites are architects of a system that by deliberate design is remote, invisible and unaccountable. That lack of accountability corrodes and corrupts democratic institutions. The lawlessness of the system encourages reckless speculation and irresponsibility.
Similarly, governors of the world’s fossil markets are powerful traders and corporations, just as unseen and unaccountable. But energy prices are not solely determined by producers of fossil fuels. They are not fixed by the president of Russia, the king of Saudi Arabia, the prime minister of Norway, or the bosses of Shell, ExxonMobil and BP. Instead, prices of fossil fuels are determined by ‘markets’ – invisible traders, investors and speculators operating in detached global markets like the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
This transfer of power away from the regulatory state, from democratic, public institutions, helps explain the impotencepotence and inadequacy of today’s politicians and policy-makers when faced with financial and energy imbalances. And that impotence – the failure and inability of elected politicians to use their power to regulate markets and address society’s grievances – has led to public despair, to the rise of conspiracy theories and disinformation. Ultimately that hollowing out of democratic power has led to societal demands for protection from the arbitrary actions of markets and to the rise of far-right authoritarians – strongman politics – promising protection from globalised market forces.
