Subordinated financialization in Latin America: Dollarization, external indebtedness, and internationalization of wealth

Abstract

Financialization refers to the process by which financial markets, actors, instruments, and institutions gain importance in the functioning of economies and where the surplus generated is directed towards financial accumulation, which displaces productive accumulation (Epstein, 2005). However, this process is heterogeneous among regions and countries, and occurs in the periphery in the form of “subordinate financialization”, since the dynamics of global accumulation condition its asymmetric and dependent insertion. This paper aims to examine a set of central aspects of the process of subordinate financialization of Latin American countries, which is manifested in the loss of sovereign monetary spaces, and which are linked to the process of dollarization of banking systems, the degree of indebtedness, and the internationalization of wealth.