Subprime: Misunderstanding the Crisis of Global Finance.

AN INSTITUTIONAL APPROACH TO THE POLITICS OF GLOBAL FINANCETimothy J. SinclairUniversity of WarwickFinance tends to be thought of as something essentially modern in nature. Like bridges, airplanes and computers, finance is understood to be subject to all the methods that positivist knowledge can deploy. But what if this is not the case? What if, like the state and other institutions, finance is not a brute or natural fact at all, but a social structure for which positivist methods, premised on the neutrality of the observer, get the way finance works quite wrong. This paper explores this notion and suggests the analysis of finance must start instead with cognitive or social facts. This perspective on finance implies very different behavioral expectations about finance, ones better suited to the volatile world of global finance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]