Rehumanizing finance

Driven on the one hand by the twin forces of economic liberalization and globalization, and on the other by technological advances, finance experienced an unprecedented boom in the 1980s. Just as in the 1920s, when financial activities, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom, had come to account for a considerable proportion of economic activity, with the consequences that we all know, from the 1990s onwards, finance came to occupy a central position, only to be confronted, crisis after crisis, with increasingly significant excesses. « Unbridled” finance and “irrational exuberance” seemed to know no bounds in their development. The subprime crisis of 2008 was, of course, the high point of a largely irresponsible financial system, whose manifest excesses plunged the world into recession and caused the loss of tens of millions of jobs. It was from the rubble of this crisis that the financial industry demonstrated its determination to put forward a more responsible and humane approach, which was to be reflected in its practices. A few years later, finance is now expected to turn its attention to the environment and sustainability, with investment practices coming under even greater scrutiny. What is the first assessment we can make of these first fifteen years of the “rehumanization” of finance : the world that comes after, or the world from before… only worse?