Towards a Socioanalysis of Money, Finance and Capitalism: Beneath the Surface of the Financial Industry

Why is it that the seemingly rational world of economic behaviour, with its calculated models and predictions, at times goes horribly wrong? The recent global financial crisis and its aftermath have made obvious how limited and broadly inadequate economic models and theories are in coping with, not to mention predicting, such phenomena. It has become evident that Adam Smith's 'invisible hand of the market' as a kind of rational balancing phenomenon is an illusion. The invisible hand is in fact guided by the innumerable, often irrational human decisions made as part of the ongoing psycho-social lives of market players.This book deepens the psycho- and socio-analytic study of the world of finance, the financial industry and the meaning and unconscious function of money and capital as a fundamental domain of contemporary society and the world at large.