The City

London and the Global Power of Finance

Tony Norfield

• Publisher: Verso
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781784783662
• eBook ISBN:
  9781784783655
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Islamic Banking & Finance
• Index: Economics

The City, as London's financial centre is known, is the world's biggest international banking and foreign exchange market, shaping the development of global capital. It is also, as this groundbreaking book reveals, a crucial part of the mechanism of power in the world economy. Based on the author's twenty years' experience of City dealing rooms, The City is an in-depth look at world markets and revenues that exposes how this mechanism works. All big international companies-not just the banks-utilize this system, and The City shows how the operations of the City of London are critical both for British capitalism and for world finance. Tony Norfield details, with shocking and insightful research, the role of the US dollar in global trading, the network of British-linked tax havens, the flows of finance around the world and the system of power built upon financial securities. Why do just fifty companies now have control of a large share of world economic production? The City explains how this situation came about, examining the history of the world economy from the post-war period to the present day.

1.

Britain, Finance and the World Economy

This business of [being] a second-tier power – we are probably, depending on what figures you use, the fifth or sixth wealthiest nation in the world.

We have the largest percentage of our GDP on exports, apart from the tiny countries around the world, we run world shipping from the UK, we are the largest European investor in south Asia, south east Asia [and] the Pacific Rim, so our money and our wealth depends on this global scene.

We are a permanent member of the (United Nations) Security Council and I think that gives us [a] certain clout and [a] certain ability.

These mean we are not a second-tier power. We are not bloody Denmark or Belgium, and if we try to become that, I think we would be worse off as a result.

Admiral Lord West, Baron of Spithead, September 2011

With this angry statement at a British Labour Party press conference, Lord West, former head of the navy, caused a minor diplomatic embarrassment, followed by apologies to ‘bloody Denmark and Belgium’. His outburst was blunt, and in stark contrast to the usual rhetoric on human rights and democratic values that characterises discussions of international affairs. Yet, although arguably a more obvious indicator of Britain’s status as a major power, Lord West did not mention the UK’s numerous military interventions. A military man himself, he might have noted Britain’s participation in no fewer than five wars under the 1997–2010 Labour government.¹ Just months before he spoke, Britain had added the bombing of Libya to a list that has not ceased to grow. Lord West is a forthright defender of British power – including putting himself on the front line, commanding a ship that was sunk in Britain’s war with Argentina over the Malvinas in 1982 – and he would no doubt see militarism, covert operations and the use of political ‘clout’ as important tools for sustaining it. War, as von Clausewitz famously wrote, is a continuation of politics by other means, and politics, in Lenin’s phrase, is ‘a concentrated expression of economics’. There can be little doubt that Lord West also appreciates these links, although the main theme of his outburst was Britain’s economic position.

In the same vein, this book focuses on the economic foundations of Britain’s global status rather than on its military escapades. My expertise is in the former, not the latter, and particularly in the financial dimensions of British economic power, something also absent from Lord West’s protestations. I worked for nearly twenty years in City of London bank dealing rooms, witnessing at first hand the major expansion of financial operations from the mid-1980s onwards. Unlike the soldier fighting in a war about which he may know very little, the basic mechanism of finance is clear to anyone who witnesses it from the inside, particularly to those who are more than a little sceptical about the benefits of capitalism.

Global finance is an integral part of the world economy today. Britain uses the financial system to gain economic privileges by appropriating value from other countries while appearing to do them a service. This examination of Britain’s financial power also reveals how others use the system. Readers who may care little about what the Brits are up to might be surprised to learn how important UK-based finance is to the world economy, how it evolved and also where their ‘home’ countries fit into a network that encompasses the United States, Germany and France, Japan and China, the offshore tax havens and elsewhere.

World economic and financial power

Critics of modern capitalism usually focus on the United States. Often, especially in Europe, their argument ends up being pitched not against capitalism per se but against the US domination of it. This overlooks the stake in the system held by other countries and the consequent role they play in the oppression of others. Lord West, in contrast to such US-focused critics, was forthright in asserting British economic and political power. But, surprisingly, he failed to mention British ownership of many of the world’s major corporations or the UK’s leading role in financial markets as part of his evidence. These are the economic foundations of Britain’s status.

In 2013, Britain had the second largest stock of foreign direct investments, worth $1,885bn.² This figure measures significant or controlling stakes in foreign companies and property. While the UK figure represented only 30 per cent of the total US investment stock of $6,350bn, it was larger as a share of the national economy. Data from a Financial Times table of the Top 500 global corporations in 2011 show a similar position. The UK was in second place behind the US, with thirty-four companies having a total market value of $2,085bn. The US had 160 companies with a value of $9,602bn.³ Another survey shows that, of the world’s top 100 non-financial corporations in 2013, ranked by the value of their foreign assets, twenty-three were US companies, sixteen were British and eleven were French, while Germany and Japan each had ten. The three biggest UK-based corporations held the second, sixth and seventh places: Royal Dutch/Shell Group plc, BP plc and Vodafone Group plc.⁴

These billions can be difficult to imagine – they have an unearthly quality compared with the money in your bank account – but they reflect real economic influence in the world. They show that while the US is clearly the most powerful country, there are also others with significant power.

Another United Nations report listed the top fifty financial companies in 2012, ranked by their geographical spread. Britain was still in second place to the US, having six compared to ten banks or other financial institutions in this top group. Britain’s HSBC was present in sixty-five countries, while Barclays Bank was operative in forty-six.⁵ Before the near-death experience of Royal Bank of Scotland and a few other UK banks in 2008, Britain was more closely tied with the US in global finance, even though foreign banks and institutions account for a large part of the City of London’s business.⁶ As for other powers, Canada, France, Germany and Switzerland each had four institutions in the top fifty; Italy, Japan and Sweden each had three. There can be no doubt that Lord West was correct in his assertion that Britain is a major world power, even if he omitted mentioning these other qualifications for that status.

The importance of British finance can be demonstrated in other ways. In 2013, the assets held by UK-based banks – a measure of the scale of their lending – were more than four times the value of UK GDP, or the annual national output. When the size of the equity market and debt securities, such as government and corporate bonds, was added, the total came to eight times GDP.⁷ Only much smaller countries, such as Switzerland, Luxembourg and Ireland, have a bigger financial sector compared to their domestic economies, based on the particular niche they occupy in world markets. The UK – which is to say, London – is one of the world’s leading financial centres and is the most international in its business reach.

The financial system is an integral part of the capitalist economy, not an anomaly that can be wished away. Rather than being like a cancer that surgery might remove to restore the capitalist body to health, it is more like a central nervous system: without finance, modern capitalism is dead. Naturally, people get angry about the behaviour of banks and the public bailouts of financiers, but, to be effective, this anger must be supplemented with an understanding of what is really going on. Why do governments in the major countries continue to support the financial sector and how do financial operations help maintain economic power?

Three topics are covered in this book. The first is the nature of the economic relationships in global capitalism. A small group of powerful countries has a privileged position in production, commerce, investment and financial relationships compared to all the others. The second is the financial system. It does not sit on top of, or alongside, what almost all economic commentators call the ‘real economy’; it pervades all economic activity. The third is the position of the British economy in the world, particularly Britain’s external transactions and its flows of investment and business revenues. Each of these three dimensions adds to an understanding of the financial form taken by the world economy today.

The term ‘finance’ is often used in relation to particular financial institutions, especially banks, or to single out the ‘financial’ sector of an economy from the ‘non-financial’ sector. This book refers to banking and other financial operations, but it is important to note that the concept of finance is not tied to a particular type of institution, or to a separate ‘financial sector’. All kinds of capitalist companies conduct important financial operations.

An example often given to illustrate this is the Ford Motor Company, when it set up Ford Motor Credit in order to offer its customers loans with which they could then buy Ford’s auto products. Similarly, GE Capital is the financial services arm of General Electric. But what about the commonplace occurrence in which an industrial company takes over its rival in a stock exchange transaction, or buys an equity stake in its suppliers? Or the information technology firm whose investors and managers want to get the company bought out by Google or Facebook, so that they can become instant billionaires? These are not examples of producers who have inadvertently strayed from industrious activity into an alien world of finance. On the contrary, they are typical examples of how capitalism operates today.

Equally, it is not just private capitalist companies who manage financial deals, since government finance ministries and central banks do so too. Governments sell securities to private investors, whether companies or individuals, and to other governments, in order to raise funds for public spending and to manage the state debt. Central banks also oversee the operations of the financial system, determining the interest rates at which they will lend (or receive) funds, how much will be lent and to whom. This puts the state, and especially powerful states, in a key position.

Under imperialism – by which I mean the present stage of capitalist development, where a few major corporations from a small number of countries dominate the world market – access to finance both reflects economic power and is a means of retaining that power. While poor countries also have banks, and while their companies may also issue bonds and equities, their ability to gain privileges by way of the global financial market is equally poor. This is because they have to operate in a system run by the major powers, one in which they take the prices offered to them and have little say over the terms of the deal. Details of how the rich countries dominate the world’s financial markets will be set out in later chapters.

There are some 200 countries in the world, but only twenty or so count as major players in world affairs, and even among those there is a clear hierarchy. As a rule, the rest must accept whatever changes in trade relations are imposed, bow to political pressures, and be wary of military intervention or other hostile actions. This also has implications for ordinary people. An old saying is that if you want to get on in life, the most important thing you can do is to make sure you are born to wealthy parents. From a global perspective, the best way to avoid being among the billions facing penury is to be born in a rich country. Then, if you have a job, the likelihood is that you will be able to spend as much on a morning coffee in Starbucks as the daily wage of the factory worker in Bangladesh who made the shirt you are wearing.

Understanding the day-to-day workings of the financial system in its international dimension is crucial here. Financial crises may hit the headlines, but they result from this regular daily mechanism and quite often distract attention from it. Above all, the financial system cannot be understood on a national basis. For example, the US dollar is the national currency of the United States, but it is also treated as ‘world money’ thanks to the international economic and financial power of the US. Decisions made in the US, especially those of the Federal Reserve on interest rates and credit policy, impact the global financial system. But world flows of finance also condition what happens in US financial markets. To a lesser extent, other major powers also have some influence, with the weakest countries condemned to being only on the receiving end.

Britain’s invisible empire

From 1979 onwards the UK financial markets experienced a boom, exponentially so after the ‘Big Bang’ reforms of 1986 destroyed the previous cosy cartel of British financial firms. The volume of dealing grew dramatically and international banks flocked to the City of London. It is surprising, then, that there has been no substantial review of this from a radical perspective since the 1980s. The links between finance and Britain’s international economic and political power have thus remained by and large invisible. There are three reasons for this.

Firstly, finance is often seen as something outside the realm of power: it is simply another line of capitalist business, while power is confined to the political sphere. But this perspective ignores the financial privileges of leading countries, which are quite distinct from their military or political strengths. As will be explained later, financial privilege is a form of economic power, and the countries that enjoy it use the financial system to draw upon the world’s resources. Those that are important financial centres receive big revenues from international financial dealing, while companies based in the richer countries have greater access to investment funds and are in a stronger position to use their financial ‘clout’ to take over rivals and extend their economic influence worldwide.

Secondly, the dominant position of the US is usually seen as the decisive factor in world developments, or even as the only one. For example, during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Britain was frequently viewed as being the ‘lapdog’ of the US.⁸ There was little recognition that the British state might be acting in British imperialism’s own economic interests. This happens a lot when the focus is on politics rather than economics.⁹ While some writers do discuss Britain’s role as an imperialist power, their analyses are most often conducted from a historical, political or diplomatic perspective, with little or no focus on the economic dimensions.¹⁰ One exception, a major historical work entitled British Imperialism: 1688–2000, does offer detailed coverage of the economic aspects of Britain’s relationships with the rest of the world, but, in its more than 700 pages, it reserves barely eight for the years after 1970.¹¹

The third reason for the lack of comment on finance and British imperialism today is that the prominence of the financial sector is seen as a result of government policy-making, not as an outgrowth of imperialist economic power. Thirty years ago, some authors did discuss the historical evolution of finance alongside British power, but their principal concern was the relationship of the City to British economic policy – especially in debates over whether financial interests were affecting government decisions to the detriment of manufacturing industry.¹² More recent analyses have had a similar focus, whether they laud the City’s operations as a successful example of how to provide competitive financial services in the world market, or whether they are critical of the City and how it supposedly dominates UK economic policy.¹³

Understanding finance and imperialism

Media stories are full of the deeds and misdeeds of financial dealers. News broadcasts are also incomplete if they fail to note the latest level of the equity market and the exchange rate: the FTSE 100 or the S&P 500, or what the dollar, euro or sterling is worth in the market today. But what kind of world works like this? Why should...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables and Charts
• Preface
• 1. Britain, Finance and the World Economy
• 2. The Anglo-American System
• 3. Finance and the Major Powers
• 4. Power and Parasitism
• 5. The World Hierarchy
• 6. Profit and Finance
• 7. The Imperial Web
• 8. Inside the Machine
• 9. Eternal Interests, Temporary Allies
• Afterword to the Paperback Edition
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Index