"It's the power of finance — for good or bad".
If it happens, it would be the ultimate demonstration of the power of finance over people.
The result was a string of legislation designed to further enhance the freedom and power of finance.
In his book, Changing Destiny, a kind of personal mission statement published last week, he stressed the need to limit the "exorbitant power of finance in our country".
It also, in the process, re-established the power of finance, because suddenly there's all these petrodollars floating around the world that the banks got hold of, and they could trade them and lend them.
But New Labour refused to build any democratic counterweight to the power of finance capital, instead clinging to the "Fabian fallacy" that a benign and omniscient government could fix things from Whitehall.
Corporations, wary of the power of finance, seek to amass cash mountains, or issue their own paper to the bond markets direct; meanwhile banks go in search of alternative sources of profit, with the result that – at the heart of the neoliberal system – is a finance mechanism prone to sudden liquidity surges (as in Andhra Pradesh) and liquidity crises (Lehman Brothers).
It was an event with huge consequences, which turned the power of finance into a monster, looming over the rest of the British economy; but it was also consistent with this old theme of internationalised, globally networked capitalism, with the City of London at its heart.
Dolphin points to the fact that, as the power of finance grew, Britain consistently ran trade deficits, year after year: "It produced a casualness about the decline of manufacturing and the collapse of all competing sectors which is really quite jaw-dropping".
