Is a Finance-Led Growth Regime a Viable Alternative to Fordism? A Preliminary Analysis

The viability and desirability of a Ž nance-led growth regime is Ž rst assessed against the historical evidence about the many alternative regimes that have been proposed as successors to Fordism. A purely hypothetical model is then built by assembling various hypotheses derived from the observation of current American trends. The imposition of Ž nancial norms, such as shareholder value, requires a new and coherent architecture for the mode of governance of Ž rms, the form of competition, the wage labour nexus and the objectives of monetary policy, public budget and tax system. According to the model, any requirement for increased proŽ t has a variable macro-economic impact on wages and economic activity according to the size of accelerator effects and the relative importance of wage and proŽ t in income formation. The stability of an equity-based regime depends on monetary policy which controls Ž nancial bubbles and thus the diffusion of Ž nance may push the economy into a zone of structural instability. The next major Ž nancial crisis may originate in the USA whose economy approximates most closely to the model. But, the so-called American ‘new economy’ combines diverse but interdependent structural transformations: diffusion of Information and Communication Technologies, search for new rules for competition, increased  exibility in wages and employment, shift from manufacturing to services. Finance is an element in, but not the whole of, this complex emerging regime.

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