World markets for capital, goods and services are increasingly integrated. New technologies are displacing human labour at an alarming rate. Industrial employers are no longer concerned with paying their employees enough to buy the products they make. Stock markets sag on news of rising employment, and share prices often rise after firms announce layoffs. Investment is shifting from the production of goods and services to financial speculation.
Finance is no longer just a means of facilitating the exchange of goods and services.
Rather, it has become a dominant force shaping peoples' destinies. The vast majority of these transactions are purely speculative. When the famous British economist John Maynard Keynes first warned against the danger of finance dominating the real economy, financial exchanges were about twice as large as merchandise trade. Today financial transactions are 72 times as large as merchandise trade. However, foreign exchange trading only accounts for about one-quarter of the speculative economy.