On the 2nd March 2021 (11h-12h GMT) Jessie Poon of the University at Buffalo presented “Regulation and Financial Organizational Capacity: Evidence from US and Singapore” to the FinGeo Virtual Semainr Series. The event was be chaired by Karen Lai (Durham University).
Jessie Poon is Professor of Geography at the University at Buffalo, New York. She is currently an editor of Environment and Planning A. She was the North American editor of Papers in Regional Science from 2002 to 2006. She has published over 100 papers on multinational firms’ locational strategies, foreign direct investment, trade, and technological upgrading dynamics in Asia.
Title: Geographies of financial regulation: the rise of regulatory capitalism
Abstract: Until recently, financial globalization is thought to encourage state atrophy from neoliberal logics of privatization. Yet under President Obama, financial regulations in the United States (US) tightened than loosened. This paradoxical trend – re-regulation alongside spread of global finance – is captured in regulatory capitalism theory which posits that states have not retreated in their delivery of regulation in contemporary capitalism, but have transformed the organizational capacity of regulation itself. The presentation seeks to explain the financial organizational capacity of US regulations in the context of economic sanctions. Examining the geography of surveillance by US and Singapore, I show how state public agencies and regulatory intermediaries do the work of sanctions rule-making and enforcement through a multiscalar arrangement of financial control. Together, state and non-state agents help diffuse cognitive understandings of US sanctions while designing symbolic structures of financial compliance that track and monitor regulatory evasion globally. I further draw attention to financial compliance professionals as local control sites, and highlight the scalar division of labor that supports US’ geopolitical aspirations.
For more information about the FinGeo Virtual Seminar Series please go to: http://www.fingeo.net/coming-up-in-2021-fingeo-virtual-seminar-series/
