The size of the 2008 financial crisis means that it
cannot be ignored as a shaper of the future. Yet
perspective is important. 9/11 was a dramatic event
but did not have to lead to a war on terror or a long
war in Iraq. It did so because there were policies and
actions ready to be triggered by the event, giving
9/11 massive catalytic power.
The 2008 crisis—if that is how history finally
refers to it - is likely to be a major influence for
the geography of finance. The odds of a world akin
to our scenario of Cybureaucracy have increased
with the world of My word is my chip facing some
challenges. In summary, we have argued that the
crisis can be analysed using the same macrodrivers—
the development and adoption of ICTs
and deregulation—which lay behind the end of geography
thesis:
(i) advances in ICTs have allowed global financial
markets to be increasingly integrated (a necessary
but not sufficient condition for the integration
of markets);
(ii) the increasing integration of global financialmarkets
has been also enabled by a political climate
which since the 1970s has led to increased
deregulation in global financial markets;
(iii) financial integration has facilitated large capital
imbalances which typically are associated with
financial crises and led to excess liquidity;
(iv) advances in ICTs have led to financial innovation–
including a swathe of increasingly complex
financial instruments—into which the excess
liquidity was channelled, both directly into
the purchase of derivative products but also
indirectly—e.g. by allowing the funding of subprime
mortgages which were then repackaged
as MBSs and CDOs;
(v) while derivative products have the aim of better
managing risk, instead a situation resulted
where imperfect information existed over
where risk lay or what can be described as
the unknown geography of risk (through outsourcing
and delocalisation); and therefore
technological innovation further increased the
risk of instability in the financial sector;
(vi) just as in 1987 when the October stock market
crash was in part blamed on programme trading,
so excess volatility in the stock market today is
attributed to the role of computerised trading
and algorithms (Grant and Gangahar, 2008).
(vii) it is also likely that the increased integration of
financial markets has led to the increased risk
of system-wide contagion.
Thus, the world of the ‘end of geography’—My
word is my chip—has resulted in a crisis, as the
development and adoption of ICTs and financial
deregulation have combined with ‘toxic’ forces,
destroying trust and value—as well as shattering
Alan Greenspan’s faith in the self-regulatory abilities
of financial players. My word is my chip is
a very potent scenario—a high risk, high reward
world—and it is of little surprise that its opposite
is the Safety first scenario. Does the crisis mean that
the ‘end of geography’ has run its course? Stipulations
in government bail-outs that banks