Emotions in Finance: Distrust and Uncertainty in Global Markets

by Jocelyn Pixley

• ISBN13: 9780521535083
• ISBN10: 0521535085
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-12-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Fear and greed are terms that make light of the uncertainty in the finance world. Huge global financial institutions rely on emotional relations of trust and distrust to suppress the uncertainties. Many financial firms develop policies towards risk, rather than accepting the reality of an uncertain future. They amass data in the futile hope of gaining certainty and to claim their options are more risk-freea than competitors. Emotions in Finance examines the views of experienced elites in the international financial world. It argues the current financial era is driven by a utopianism a hope--that the future can be collapsed into the present. It points out policy implications of this short-term view at the unstable peak of global finance. This book provides a timely account of the influence of emotion and speculation on the worldas increasingly volatile financial sector. The author includes absorbing interview material from public and private bankers in the United States, UK and Australia.

Author Biography

Jocelyn Pixley is a senior lecturer in the School of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of New South Wales, Australia.

Table of Contents

Figures	viii
Interviews 2000-2002	ix
Preface	xiii
Abbreviations	xv
1 Global Markets or Social Relations of Money	1	(16)
2 Emotion in the Kingdom of Rationality	17	(26)
3 The Financial Media as Institutional Trust Agencies	43	(24)
4 Emotions in the Boardroom	67	(27)
5 Credibility and Confidence in the Central Banks	94	(19)
6 Hierarchies of Trust	113	(20)
7 Overwhelmed by Numbers	133	(24)
8 The Time Utopia in Finance	157	(26)
9 Implications: Emotions and Rationality	183	(26)
References	209	(10)
Index	219