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ThomasMarois,States,BanksandCrisis:
EmergingFinanceCapitalisminMexicoand
Turkey(CheltenhamandNorthampton,MA:
EdwardElgar,2012),pp.xi+263,70.00,hb.
JEFFPOWELL
JournalofLatinAmericanStudies/Volume45/Issue01/February2013,pp169170
DOI:10.1017/S0022216X13000205,Publishedonline:06March2013
Linktothisarticle:http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0022216X13000205
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JEFFPOWELL(2013).JournalofLatinAmericanStudies,45,pp169170
doi:10.1017/S0022216X13000205
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nancial economics (such as Dicksons Financial Revolution or Allen and Gales
comparative framework) are ignored. I have violated Thumpers mothers law (if you
dont have anything nice to say, dont say anything at all) in this review because
enough is enough. Instead of sober reection useful for our post-crisis world, this
book reects a juvenile fascination with a single micro variable that is out of place. It is
only through the bending of data, time frames and reality that the simple-minded
orthodoxies of hermetic debates among self-declared liberal economists may
distract scholars and policy-makers from the urgent tasks of reconstructing markets
and banks.
Brazil is not a role model for orthodoxy. Brazil remained, by far, one of Latin
Americas poorest countries during the period examined, devastated by imperial
reaction, slavery, oligarchic authoritarianism and vicious cycles of underdevelopment.
Brazilian studies matter because they have produced profound understanding of
underdevelopment and claried the creative heterodoxy of muddling through terrible
conditions. It is this trajectory of skewed banking, nance and growth that counts.
Focusing on corporate bylaws is an anachronism we cannot aord while markets
have crashed down around us in the twenty-rst century. Nor are single-paragraph
comparisons and playful counterfactuals acceptable. One reads in fear and disbelief
that this focus on corporate bylaws and boardroom democracy may spread to explain
nancial development elsewhere, even in Nazi Germany (sic!). Please stop.
K U R T E . V O N M E T T E N H E I M Fundao Getulio Vargas, So Paulo
J. Lat. Amer. Stud. (o+,). doi:+o.+o+-/Soo+oX+,oooo,
Thomas Marois, States, Banks and Crisis: Emerging Finance Capitalism in
Mexico and Turkey (Cheltenham and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, o+),
pp. xi +o,, -o.oo, hb.
There is an urgent need for political economy analysis that theorises the role of nance
in emerging capitalist countries. Thomas Maroiss book is therefore an especially
valuable and accessible contribution to the literature. Maroiss thesis is that the
current phase of accumulation, which he refers to as emerging nance capitalism,
marks the fusion of the interests of domestic and foreign nancial capital in the state
apparatus as the institutionalized priorities and overarching social logic guiding the
actions of state managers and government elites (p. +o).
Four premises guide the analysis. Both states and banks are understood as social
relations. Banks bring together external relations with other rms, the state and
labour, and internal relations between the owners of money capital and bank labour.
The third premise is that labour is vital to emerging nance capitalism. This points to
Maroiss careful attention to the role of labour in understanding bank protability and
operational orientation, something which is all too often overlooked. Finally, crises
play a critical role in emerging nance capitalism. The resolution of crisis provides the
rationale for the changes that have privileged the power of nancial capital.
Marois next moves quickly and competently through the period of post-war
capitalist development. This provides sound historical foundations for the more
detailed analysis which follows: rstly, a chapter on the period of bank nationalisation
and subsequent re-privatisation from +,s to +,,; and then a further chapter on
the more recent period covering the tequila crisis, NAFTA and the extranjerizacin of
the banking system. Unlike structuralist accounts which have wrestled with whether or
+o, Book Reviews
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not to depict the actions of a particular government as developmentalist or neoliberal,
Marois places each policy agenda within the constraints imposed by the prevailing
relations of production and the state of Mexicos integration into the world market.
Along the way, a number of sacred cows in orthodox accounts of the causes of
Mexicos crises are slain. These include the broadly accepted wisdom that the nancial
crisis of +,,, was the result of weak state regulation and political failures. A number
of commentators have argued that the management of the re-privatisation process of
Mexicos banks led to prices being paid for the banks in +,,+ that were too high.
This allegedly was the reason for the period of super-competition which followed,
driving up non-performing loan ratios. Marois disputes this, arguing that the prices
paid were more a symptom of neoliberal competitive imperatives than a causal
explanation of the subsequent crisis. These imperatives included the structural
pressure of state debt requiring that revenues from the sale be maximised, and the tacit
understanding that the bidders were buying into a new strategy of accumulation in
which state authorities had practically ensured high returns (p. ,+).
A notable and undoubtedly controversial contribution of the book comes from
Marois turning his analysis on sacred cows of the heterodox variety. Against the weight
of opinion, Marois contends that in the current era there is little dierence between
either public and private or domestic and foreign ownership of banks. This will be a
bitter pill to swallow for some on the left in Mexico. Neoliberal restructuring, says
Marois, compels all banks, regardless of ownership, to operate without regard for
national development. Indeed, the period of bank nationalisation in Mexico paved the
way for liberalisation by eliminating the need for the government to negotiate with the
bankers over subsequent liberalisation processes. However, if we look at the examples
of countries such as Brazil which host much more robust national development banks,
it is not clear that there is no regard for national development. Indeed, in Maroiss
comparison of the Turkish and Mexican experiences, he highlights the role played by
national development banks in Turkey in both mitigating crisis and counteracting
uneven development.
On the issue of which ag a bank operates under, Marois takes a strong view that
there is little to dierentiate between the strategies of large Mexican and large foreign
banks. He argues that both are equally neoliberal in their quest to drive down labour
costs and exploit state nancial support. But while there may be similarity in the drive
to protability, perhaps there is still room to dierentiate how those prots are
generated. The Unin de Instituciones Financieras Mexicanas (Union of Mexican
Financial Institutions, UNIFIM) argued in a o+o report entitled Bancos mexicanos
y extranjeros, cartera de prstamos y estructura de la rentabilidad antes y despus de la
crisis econmica oo,o+o (see http://tinyurl.com/acssvvf) that Mexican-owned
banks are less protable as a result of greater lending to more expensive customers
(read: SMEs) and earning less from the nancialised world of commissions and fees.
Clearly more meticulous empirical work, rejecting simplistic cross-country regressions
of the World Bank type, is needed on the question of ownership.
Whether or not the reader concurs with Marois on these points is probably less
important than that such debate is generated. The book marks a vital step in the
project to integrate a Marxian theory of statesociety relations into our understanding
of the role of nance in emerging capitalist countries. For this reason it deserves to be
read much more widely than simply by those with an interest in banking in Mexico
and Turkey.
J E F F P O W E L L SOAS, University of London
+-o Book Reviews