The global financial crisis is usually seen as a failure of neoclassical economic theory and neoliberal policy, but it also represented an epistemological failure. Forecasters who missed the crisis neglected to include the financial sector in their models, while aggregate indicators such as GDP failed in spite (or perhaps because) of their heavy emphasis on financially driven growth. In contrast to both critics and proponents of GDP who see it as a purely statistical measure, this article argues that GDP is in fact a form of numerical rhetoric. Political messages in such estimates were explicit until the early twentieth century, but have since become implicit in hidden assumptions. To uncover the narratives built-in to GDP's view of finance, the article conducts a thought-experiment comparing GDP with two counterfactual indicators corresponding to historical views of finance as either non-productive or an actual cost to society. The analysis shows how changing this single assumption leads to very different narratives regarding the class-balance of workers vs. capitalists, the relative importance of consumption, and the extent of space that exists for public policy to influence the economy. The article concludes with some thoughts on making the implicit assumptions in GDP explicit, and opening up the debate to the broader public in a transparent way.

The rise of financial technology (FinTech) engenders novel business models through integrating financial services and information and communication technologies (ICT). Digital currencies and payments, data mining, and other FinTech applications threaten to radically overhaul the financial sector. This article argues that, while we are becoming aware of how technology giants such as Apple Inc. are making inroads into financial services, we need to become more sensitive to how financial incumbents mimick ICT firms while aiming to neutralize the FinTech challenge. Practices from Silicon Valley are spilling over into ‘traditional’ finance through a process we dub Appleization. We illustrate how incumbents aim to remain indispensable amidst rapid digitization. Mimicking tech strategies, financial incumbents resort to transforming legacy ICT systems into integrated platforms, cultivating entrepreneurial ecosystems where startups are ‘free’ to compete whilst effectively being locked into the incumbent's orbit. We illustrate this by comparing Apple's business features (locking-in developers, customers and state into a hybrid business model based on a synergy between hardware, software and data-driven platform components) with emerging practices in the financial industry. Our analogy suggests that the Appleization of finance might radically transform, yet not undercut the oligopolistic position of financial incumbents.

How exactly did the neoliberal imaginary that Konings describes gain so much traction? Was its speculative temporality smoothly translated into practice from the writings of Hayek and others as he suggests, or was its production a messier, more contested, and more contingent affair? In this brief commentary, I go back to one of the key historical moments that he examines, the Volcker shock of 1979-82, and examine some of the more mundane political and technical struggles that defined the early Reagan Administration’s efforts to put the neoliberal speculative logic into practice. By revealing the often-flawed material efforts that go into producing speculative temporalities, I argue that such struggles might allow us to arrive at a less teleological account of the resilience of neoliberalism.

Konings successfully mobilizes social theory to demonstrate how various post-Marxist, Polanyian, and Foucauldian analyses fail to make sense of financialization and neoliberal governance as persistent societal formations. In their place he offers an analysis focused on the logic of ‘leverage’, which he sees as a source of not only private gain but also governmental power. I fully endorse Konings' turn to social theory, and in particular to the work of Niklas Luhmann. But I suggest that, since Konings leaves out Luhmann's broader theory of society, he can neither capture the tight couplings between the economy and politics presupposed in neoliberal governance, nor contextualize this governance as a ‘provincial’, US-centred project.

Proposing a non-moralistic critique of the changes to neoliberal capitalism post-crisis, Konings provides a refreshing take on the dynamics of financial governance, emphasizing the way linkages between state and finance are structured by a speculative logic internal to neoliberalism. In this essay, I raise a number of questions about this characterization of neoliberalism, focusing on issues of agency and durability. First, does the turn to systems theory allow for a satisfactory account of the role that agency has played in the historical expansion of neoliberalism? And second, is it possible to envisage an end to neoliberalism when neoliberalism is so closely identified with capital dynamics in general?

What is the relationship now, and what should the relationship be, between a social-theory oriented critique of neoliberalism, such as the one Konings provides, and other disciplines? In this review essay, I suggest some of the conversations we might form between Konings' text and texts of a more Marxist variety, including Alfred Sohn-Rethel's Intellectual and Manual Labor, as well as contemporary literary studies texts, including Mary Poovey's Genres of the Credit Economy and Fredric Jameson's “Culture and Finance Capital”. In each potential pairing, I suggest a possible relationship between historical time, financial time, and narrative itself.

This rejoinder takes up some of the points that have been raised by the reviews of Capital and Time in this forum. It engages the question of how political economy should position itself vis-à-vis concerns about the dangers of essentialism and teleological explanation. It argues that a proper theorization of the logic of ‘leverage’ is key to the development of a political economy that appropriates the insights of post-foundational theory but is still able to account for the reality of power and inequality.

As the subtitle of her new book suggests, Mazzucato aims to distinguish value creators from value extractors. This distinction between making and taking, between earning and deserving, between rent-seeking and value-contributing, is posited as crucial, yet it can no longer be made from within the paradigm of neoclassical economics, which has defined the distinction out of existence. Mazzucato shows this was not always so: classical economists did make the distinction, as did preceding economic schools such as the Physiocrats. This, however, is not a purely intellectual exercise; Mazzucato seeks to influence public debate, stating that “only by debunking ideas about value … can a long-lasting solution be found” (213), the problem being that what the financial sector, pharmaceutical companies, and national account statisticians call ‘value creation’ is in fact typically the opposite.