In his “Postscript on Control Societies,” Deleuze notably refers to a “mutation of capitalism” as one of the key characteristics of the post-disciplinary regime he terms control society. “The operation of markets,” he writes, “is now the instrument of social control and forms the impudent breed of our masters” (1992: 6). In the following essay, I will focus on a section of the economy in which this mutation is especially visible: the realm of finance, which in recent years has assumed an increasingly political and governmental function

Vogl, Joseph

English

Starting from the premise that the financial regime has become a power in and of itself—a fourth, ‘monetative’ power as it were—this essay gives an account of the ascendancy of finance and the shift from geopolitical to geo-economical order, within which there is no democratic legitimacy and no legal accountability and within which a new class conflict also emerges. It goes on to advance five theses on this new financial sovereignty, concluding that sovereign is he, who can transform his risks into other’s dangers and position him-self as the creditor of last resort

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175THE FINANCIAL REGIMEJoseph VoglABSTRACTStarting from the premise that the financial regime has become a power in and of itself—a fourth, ‘monetative’ power as it were—this essay gives an account of the ascendancy of finance and the shift from geopolitical to geo-economical order, within which there is no democratic legitimacy and no legal accountability and within which a new class conflict also emerges. It goes on to advance five theses on this new financial sovereignty, concluding that sovereign is he, who can transform his risks into other’s dangers and position him-self as the creditor of last resort.KEYWORDS:Finance, Sovereignty, Power, Geo-economical order, Democracy, ClassModernity has given rise not merely to the sovereign state apparatus, to international trade companies, to influential financiers, to decentralized markets. It has also witnessed the formation of a particular type of power—the financial regime—that cannot be properly described in terms either of political structures or of economic strategies. This type of power is constituted, instead, by the interpenetration of these poles. From the integration of private creditors into the politics of early modern states, to the creation of central banks and public credit, all the way up to today’s capitalism of financial markets, we can trace the emergence of a type of ‘economic governance’ that ultimately has immunized itself against the democratization of political power. We find ourselves in a situation in which, above all, the financial regime has taken on the character of a ‘fourth power’ and the accumulation of capital power is intimately associated with the deployment of power capital. Insofar as crises are intellectual windfalls, driving forces out of latency that, under normal conditions, remain inconspicuous, the last financial and economic crisis offered an apt illustration: in it a style of government could be observed that merits the title of a ‘coup d’état’.The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, No. 60 (2020), pp. 175–182176This means two things. On the one hand, from 2008 to current Euro policy, we have been dealing with decision-making bodies consisting of state representatives, international organizations and private companies, which have joined together in informal committees, operating outside the legal framework, to represent the interests of creditors. One particular example has been provided by the so-called Eurogroup, which directly dictates the fate of European debtor countries. In response to the question, on what legal basis they intended to enforce their decisions against resistance by individual members, the secretary of the Eurogroup retorted: “the Eurogroup does not exist in law […]. It is an informal group […] of the eurozone member states. Thus there are no written rules about the way it conducts its business, and therefore its president is not legally bound.”1On the other hand, the measures taken have manifested themselves as quasi-sovereign acts. In the Eurogroup, but also the European Stability Mechanism and the Fiscal Pact, legislative procedures were circumvented, creating a secondary structure without legal formalization, which acted as a transnational executive, suspending budgetary powers, intervening in tax law, social policy, labor law, and so on. The results are well known: In Greece, for example, economic output collapsed by 28%, unemployment rose to 27%, youth unemployment to 65%, and average wages fell by nearly a quarter.What is going on here? How could such an ostentatious alliance between finance capital and government power come about? How did this fusion of informal consortia, sovereign competencies and transnational executive authority emerge? What components comprise the current financial regime? To begin with, it was formed through a process that has, for some time now, been referred to as ‘financialization’. Its beginnings reach back to the 1970s and are characterized by a confluence of disparate actions and events. A first condition was the collapse of the Bretton Woods Agreement in the early ’70s, leading to floating exchange rates, new financial instruments (like currency derivatives) and expanding financial markets. Then came the so-called ‘Volcker shock’, when the Federal Reserve under Paul Volcker drastically increased the fed funds rate, redirecting profits from surplus countries (like Japan and Germany) to Wall Street, while at the same time forcing a fall in wage costs. This was supplemented by liberal economic reforms under Thatcher and Reagan: deregulation of financial markets, tax privileges for interest-bearing assets, and privatization of social security Joseph Vogl177 The Financial Regimesystems. In addition to further interventions which allowed finance capital to break out of its containment by the welfare state (reduction of corporate taxes, reform of labor markets, financial market promotion laws), two additional components came into play.On the one hand, a new and dominant role for international organizations and treaties in the financial world—as was most evident in the role of the IMF. Since the 1970s the IMF had been given a very special field of activity, namely monitoring adherence to ‘stability criteria’ in the face of floating exchange rates. The heyday of ‘structural adjustment programs’ had begun: granting loans to developing and emerging countries subject to strict conditions, including budgetary discipline, tax reform, privatization of state-owned enterprises, investor protection, liberalization of capital markets, and facilitation of foreign investment.On the other hand, a reorientation of central banks was undertaken—as can be seen in particular in the founding of the ECB. The ECB considers itself to be the guarantor of the financial and monetary system: it provides services to banks and financial markets, while operating as an independent enclave of governance, immune from other governmental bodies. And its orientation is therefore conspicuously one-sided: While it is no way accountable to European parliaments and governments, it answers to the financial public. It is obligated to those investors and actors who dictate the dynamics of financial markets to safeguard currency and monetary value. In other words, the ECB offers a kind of ‘minority protection’ to the representatives of the financial sector; through central banks, financial markets have become an integral part of governmental practice and manifest themselves as para-democratic.This picture certainly does not capture all the elements of the current financial regime (for instance, e-commerce, shadow banks, and the dominant economic doctrines should not be forgotten). But, of course, it raises the question: What are the characteristics of the financial regime, past and present? What kind of governance does it represent? What kind of power? Let me just formulate a few theses concerning the present situation.First. The ascendancy of finance is due to an intense interplay between public and private agencies and cannot be described by the opposition of the state and the markets. Here, the antagonism of state and capital is weak or absent altogether. The financial regime must be defined as a special kind of modern power, as 178a special technology in the execution of modern power, modern government: that is the conversion of state power into capital (and vice versa), which guarantees perpetual scenes of primitive accumulation. This has led to a movement as powerful as it is ambiguous. Just as the modern state secured its permanence through the perpetuation of public debt and taxation, so the financial regime obtained a quasi-sovereign power in fiscal affairs. At the same time, through a permanent state of emergency (that is, a permanent dependence from private financiers and creditors), this power evaded sovereign intervention and later obtained institutional form in national, central and note issuing banks. This indicates the precarious status of the financial regime. In it, the alienation or privatization of state resources comes up against the political occupation of private finance. It is this two-way public-private interplay that gives the financial regime its special status. On the fiscal side, this regime claims arcane components and sovereign dignity; as the embodiment of private capital, on the other hand, it resists acts of arbitrary political power. The formation of the sovereign state unleashed, together with private business, a dynamic which manifests itself in an eccentric becoming-sovereign of the financial regime. With finance, a reserve of sovereignty forming a category of its own established itself alongside and apart from state authority.Second. When we speak today of the financial system, we are not referring to a purely economic matter, a special market system. The present financial system is rather a conglomerate of government bodies, central banks, international organizations (IMF), and privileged private corporations (investment groups, rating agencies), an ensemble of public, semi-private, and private actors. One could speak here of ‘regulatory capitalism’2 and of a transnational, trans-governmental executive, which is to say: of a power that makes and implements political decisions, which intervene directly in national economies and in the politics of traditional nation states. As a power of its own kind, the financial regime structures a global space in which sovereign competencies, business, and market mechanisms are converging. This characterizes a shift from geopolitical to geo-economical order which distributes areas of exploitation and zones of accumulation, establishing a new class conflict: mobile investors, or super-citizens, against earthbound sub-citizens.Third. In the history of finance, essential ruptures are not marked by the ‘resounding’ events of recent crises. Rather, the historic break took place in the seventies when secular trends Joseph Vogl179 The Financial Regimereversed. Up to this date, progressive taxation, solidary social insurance, and strong trade unions fought for a continuous reduction of inequalities in the distribution of revenues and assets. Financialization reversed these dynamics and caused a situation in which a maximum of private fortune confronts a maximum of private (and public) debt.3 Two aspects are noteworthy. On the one hand, an increasing portion of profits and credit was invested in financial products causing an offensive deindustrialization (e.g. in the UK and the USA), a movement which is reinforced in present platform capitalism, creating high market values for companies that are increasingly unburdened by liabilities against fixed capital and labor. On the other hand, the financial regime installs a transfer system which turns the lower part of the population into payers of net interest in favor of finance capital. This process was accompanied by the passive inclusion of wage earners in the financial economy: expansion of consumer credits, mortgages, privatization of social security. One could observe one of the results in the Euro crisis: The weakest countries and groups had to bear the costs of the crisis—an internal colonization of European populations. The dynamic of finance not only released centrifugal forces in politics and economy; it also eroded social milieus of solidarity—one of the most important resources of democracy.Fourth. This raises a related problem which has already become a major preoccupation for economists today: namely, the devolution of the monopoly on regulating liquidity from states and central banks to financial markets themselves. We are witnessing a transition here from a financial system regulated by governments to a system of financial governance regulated by markets. This has two consequences. For one thing, central banks are increasingly losing control of interest rates and the money supply in circulation. Money creation now happens in the market itself; even the vast quantities of cheap money injected into the economy by the ECB have barely been able to counter deflationary tendencies in recent years. For another thing, financial markets have become a ‘prison’ for governments, states, and societies. This has become particularly apparent in the policies of the ECB: the ECB is subject to a rule blocking it from purchasing bonds directly from the European member states; government bonds can only be purchased indirectly, through markets. That’s why states are now evaluated by these markets, setting up a kind of reputation or beauty contest among them. An automatic profit-generating mechanism has been set up: the ECB supplies private banks with cheap money, which they pass on to governments at 180higher interest rates. Using the threat of capital flight, interest rate disadvantages and reduced investment, financial markets have thus become a fourth power (we can call it ‘monetative’—besides legislative, executive, judiciary powers4), a creditor of last resort.Fifth. All this gives rise to a double dilemma. According to the prevailing dogma, economic growth can be financed by low interest rates and cheap money (this has been the ECB’s strategy, also the Fed’s, for years; zero-interest rate policy (ZIRP), quantitative easing). But this very policy leads to the accumulation of future risk potentials: cheap money is less likely to be invested in industry and infrastructures, and more likely to flow into capital and real estate markets. The symptoms are already on the horizon: stock market booms, explosive real estate prices. So the very effort to generate economic growth summons the next financial crisis. But there is also the shadow of a political dilemma; a dilemma concerning the scope available for political decision-making. The depolitization of monetary politics (now dominated by the financial markets) is accompanied by the privilege of the financial industry, which may determine the distribution of wealth by money creation and the very special structures of financing. The anticipation of market preferences dictates the direction of political decisions. The concern of the democratic voting public is limited by the concern of a powerful minority, the financial public. This political and social cleavage will undoubtedly continue to occupy and afflict us. One might say, in fact, that the financial public today is pitted in class struggle against the entire rest of the population.This inevitably raises older questions of sovereignty. Although we must come to terms with a global situation in which sovereign authority today can be exercised only in a restricted, distributed and fragmented way, some questions persist. In such a situation, we should first of all be wary of false friends, who offer answers to questions which they are not able to pose. One figure is posed by liberalism, which, by pointing out the blessings of a market order, systematically overlooks the concrete power relations of the financial regime. The other false hope is that placed in the old nation-state. For in addition to the essential role this entity has played in the creation of the current financial order, it is already in the process of concluding the most aggressive of alliances, one currently being tested in the USA: the alliance of the financial industry and plutocratic lobbies with a politics of national ressentiment.Joseph Vogl181 The Financial RegimeHow can the persistent deformation of democratic principles in the financial regime be prevented? On the one hand, for a moment, good prospects had emerged in Europe after 2008: Big banks were voluntarily nationalized, solidarity movements were founded, and sound proposals were amassed concerning the long overdue coordination of monetary, fiscal and economic policy. But all that is a thing of the past: the separation of retail and investment banking demanded by all experts is only the most recent casualty. On the other hand, the financial regime has asserted its supremacy as an even more efficient combination of private value creation and the use of sovereign reserves of power. Therefore our pessimism today can hardly be great enough, that is to say: what is at stake is the intensification of a pessimist realism which mistrusts attempts at appeasement, which does not consider financial capitalism to be the best of all possible worlds, and which makes the power of the financial regime appear so illegitimate and unacceptable that it becomes accessible to interventions, contestations and struggles. This is not how we wish to be governed.For the rule of the financial regime is: the sovereign is he, who can transform his risks into other’s dangers and position himself as the creditor of last resort.1821 Yanis Varoufakis, Adults in the Room: My Battle with the European and American Deep Establishment (New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2017), 447.2 See David Levi-Faur, “The Global Diffusion of Regulatory Capitalism,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 598, no. 1 (2016): 12-32; Fabrizio Gilardi, “The Institutional Foundations of Regulatory Capitalism: The Diffusion of Independent Regulatory Agencies in Western Europe,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 598, no. 1 (2016): 84-101.3 Thomas Piketty, Le capital au XXIe siècle (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2013).4 See Aaron Sahr, Keystroke-Kapitalismus. Ungleichheit auf Knopfdruck (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2017), 154.NOTESJoseph Vogl

THE FINANCIAL REGIME

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The Financial Regime

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   Coils of the Serpent 6 (2020): 55-60  55 Vogl: The Financial Regime The Financial Regime1 JOSEPH VOGL HU Berlin, Germany   In his “Postscript on Control Societies,” Deleuze notably refers to a “mutation of capital-ism” as one of the key characteristics of the post-disciplinary regime he terms control society. “The operation of markets,” he writes, “is now the instrument of social control and forms the impudent breed of our masters” (1992: 6). In the following essay, I will focus on a section of the economy in which this mutation is especially visible: the realm of finance, which in recent years has assumed an increasingly political and governmental function.  This development should concern us – if we are not indifferent to how we are gov-erned now and in the future. Indeed, we have reached a critical point where it will be decided whether current democracies will turn into ‘demonocracies.’ I am not just refer-ring to such boisterous attempts that link the dismantling of the constitutional state with the mobilization of nationalist or ethnic resentment. Rather, we are in a situation in which the financial regime has taken on the character of a ‘fourth power’ and in which the formation of a power of capital (Kapitalmacht) is directly linked to the operations of capitals of power (Machtkapitalien). Insofar as crises represent intellectual strokes of luck driving forces out of their latency that remain inconspicuous under normal condi-tions, the last financial and economic crisis provided an appropriate diagram: here one could observe a style of government that deserves the title of a subtle coup d’état.   This means two things. On the one hand, from 2008 to the current euro policy, we are dealing with decision-making entities made up of government representatives, in-ternational organizations, and private companies (major banks, rating agencies) that have come together in informal bodies, represent the interests of creditors, and operate outside legal ties.2 A particular example was provided by the so-called Eurogroup, which directly dictates the fate of European debtor countries. When asked on what legal basis decisions are to be enforced against the opposition of individual members, the chair of the Eurogroup replied very straightforwardly: “The Eurogroup does not exist in Europe-                                                        1 The following essay is based on a podcast that was recorded for the Wiener Festwochen 2018 as part of the series “Pod Save Austria.” 2 For more on this, see my book The Ascendancy of Finance (Vogl 2017).    Coils of the Serpent 6 (2020): 55-60  56 Vogl: The Financial Regime an law. It is an informal group and, therefore, there are no written rules to constrain its President.” (Varoufakis 2015)   On the other hand, measures were taken that manifested themselves as quasi-sovereign actions. With the Eurogroup, but also with the European Stability Mechanism or the Fiscal Compact, legislative procedures were circumvented and a legally non-formalized secondary structure was created, which functions as a transnational execu-tive authority: with the suspension of budgetary rights, with interventions in tax law, social policy, labor law, etc. The effects are well known: In Greece, for example, economic output collapsed by 28%, unemployment rose to 27%, youth unemployment to 65%, and average wages fell by almost a quarter.  What happened here? How could this ostentatious alliance between finance capital and government come about? How did this fusion of informal consortia, sovereign pow-ers, and transnational executive authority take place? And what are the components of which the current financial regime is made up?   Initially, it was formed as part of a process called, for quite some time now, ‘finan-cialization.’ The beginnings go back to the 1970s and are characterized by a confluence of different events and measures. A first condition was the collapse of the Bretton Woods system (in the early 1970s), which led to “floating rates of exchange” (Deleuze 1992: 5), new financial instruments (such as currency derivatives), and expanding fi-nancial markets. Then came the so-called ‘Volcker shock,’ when the Federal Reserve (under Paul Volcker) drastically raised its benchmark interest rate in order to divert the profits of surplus countries (like Japan or Germany) to Wall Street, while simultaneously forcing down labor costs. This was supplemented by the (neo-)liberal economic reforms under Thatcher and Reagan – with the deregulation of financial markets, tax privileges for interest-bearing assets, and the privatization of social security systems. Next to other interventions that enabled financial capital to break out of its welfare state containment (e.g. the reduction of corporate taxes, the reform of labor markets, or the passing of Fi-nancial Market Promotion Laws), two further components were added.  On the one hand, a new and dominant role of international organizations and agreements in the realm of finance – perhaps most evident in the role of the IMF. Since the 1970s, it has been given a special assignment, namely, to monitor compliance with ‘stability criteria’ in the face of floating exchange rates. Now the great era of ‘structural adjustment programs’ began: the granting of loans to developing and emerging nations under strict requirements – including budgetary discipline, tax reforms, privatization of state-owned enterprises, protection of investors, the liberalization of the capital market, and the facilitation of foreign investments.     Coils of the Serpent 6 (2020): 55-60  57 Vogl: The Financial Regime  On the other hand, a reorientation of central banks was pushed, something which is best illustrated by the establishment of the ECB: It sees itself as the guarantor of the fi-nancial and monetary system, functions as service provider for banks and financial mar-kets, operates as an independent governmental enclave, and is impervious to other or-gans of government. Hence, it is characterized by a one-sided orientation: While it is not accountable to European parliaments and governments, its responsibility is to the finan-cial community. In order to secure currency and monetary value, it is committed to those investors and players who dictate the dynamics of the financial markets. In other words, the ECB provides a kind of ‘minority protection’ for the representatives of fi-nance. Through central banks, then, financial markets have become an integral part of government practice and manifest themselves as para-democratic political agents.   This certainly does not cover all the elements of the current financial regime (for instance, one must not forget electronic commerce, shadow banking, or the dominant economic doctrines). But it does of course raise the question: What can we expect from all this? What can we hope for? Or more precisely: Of what must we despair? What are “the new forces knocking at the door”? (Deleuze 1992: 4)   First, when we speak of financial economics today, we do not refer to an economic state of affairs or to a special market system. Rather, the current financial regime is a conglomerate of state organs, central banks, international organizations, treaties, and privileged private companies, an ensemble of public, semi-private, and private actors. One should not speak of free markets here, but of a ‘regulatory capitalism.’ With its own transnational legal power, it has gained the status of a global executive authority, which directly intervenes in national economies and the government policies of the old nation states. As a special form of power, the financial regime structures a transnational space in which sovereign authorities, business, and market mechanisms merge. Thus, we wit-ness the transition from a geo-political to a geo-economic order, in which accumulation and exploitation zones are distributed differently and a new class antagonism is estab-lished: a confrontation between mobile groups of investors or supercitizens, on the one hand, and the more earthbound citizens or subcitizens, on the other.   Second, major turning points in the history of the financial regime are not marked by the ‘resounding’ events of the recent crises. Rather, the historical rupture took place in the 1980s, which saw a reversal of long-term trends. Until then, progressive taxes, social security systems, and strong trade unions had ensured a continuous reduction of inequalities in the distribution of income and wealth. The processes of financialization have inverted this dynamic and have led to a situation in which a peak in private wealth stands in stark contrast to a record level of private (and public) debt, with both – assets and debts – being increasingly unequally distributed (I will spare you the well-known data; see, for example, Piketty 2014). Two moments are particularly noteworthy. On the    Coils of the Serpent 6 (2020): 55-60  58 Vogl: The Financial Regime one hand, since the 1990s an increasing proportion of profits and credit has been in-vested in financial products; this has initiated an aggressive deindustrialization driven by the financial economy (especially in the US and in the UK) which is continued in to-day’s ‘platform capitalism’ (see Srnicek 2017), whose high profits and stock market val-ues are due to policies that released companies from their responsibilities to fixed capi-tal and labor. On the other hand, the financial regime thus functions as a bottom to top transfer system which turns the lower half of the population into net interest payers for the owners of financial assets. This has been accompanied by the passive inclusion of wage earners into the financial economy: through the expansion of consumer credit and mortgages, through pension funds supported by the financial market, and through the privatization of health and retirement provisions. The upward redistribution of interest payments corresponds to a downward redistribution of financial risks. One result could be observed in the wake of the euro crisis: The weakest countries and groups bore the costs of the crisis – a kind of internal colonization of European populations was orga-nized. The dynamics of the financial regime thus not only unleashed political and eco-nomic centrifugal forces in Europe (a process that is open-ended), but also attacked one of the most important resources of democratic politics and led to an overall erosion of solidarity.   Third, this is linked to a problem that is already intensely examined by economists: namely, the migration of the liquidity monopoly from governments and central banks to the financial markets. We are dealing with the transition from a ‘government-driven’ to a ‘market-driven’ financial system, which has become detached from the central bank/commercial banks axis. This in turn has two consequences. On the one hand, cen-tral banks have lost the overview of systemic risks, but also the control over circulating money supplies. Money creation takes place in the markets, recent financial instruments have erased the difference between money and financial assets, and the idea of a definite and determinable quantity of money must now appear as a historical curiosity. The structural instability of financial markets is complemented by the waning of control mechanisms. On the other hand, financial markets have become a ‘prison’ for govern-ments, national economies, and societies. This is particularly evident in the policy of the ECB, which is bound to a ‘blocking rule’ for the purchase of bonds of the European mem-ber states; also, an enrichment automatism was installed: The ECB provides private banks with cheap money, which the latter lend more profitably for public finance, while conversely buying public debt previously purchased by private banks. The independent central bank has financed the dependence of public budgets on the financial sector; and with the threat of capital flight, interest rate penalties, and a decrease of investments, the financial markets themselves have become a ‘fourth power,’ that is, a creditor of last resort.     Coils of the Serpent 6 (2020): 55-60  59 Vogl: The Financial Regime  Fourth, a double dilemma has arisen from this. According to prevailing dogma, eco-nomic growth is financed by low interest rates and cheap money (as has been attempted for a decade). However, this is precisely what leads to the accumulation of future risks: Investments flow less into industry, infrastructure, or labor, but rather seek out capital and real estate markets. The symptoms are already apparent: from the stock market boom of recent years to the devastation of the inner cities due to exploding property prices. The attempt to generate economic growth is thus simultaneously financing the next financial crisis. This is accompanied by the shadow of a political dilemma. The de-politicization of monetary policy, which has migrated from central banks to financial markets, went hand in hand with a political privileging of the financial industry, which, via money creation and financing structures, can decide major distribution issues for itself. Political decisions are thus dictated by the anticipation of market preferences; and the interests of a voting public are limited by the moods of an investing financial public. This, if you will, is a class struggle waged by the agents of finance against the rest of the population.   Inevitably, older issues of sovereignty thus reappear. Even if one must accept a global situation in which sovereign authority can today only be exercised in a limited, disseminated and fragmented way, some questions remain (with which I will conclude). In such a situation, one should first of all beware of false friends offering answers to questions they are unable to ask. A case in point is liberalism, which, by referring to the blessings of the market system, consistently ignores the concrete power structure of the financial regime. The other false hope is placed on the old nation state. For besides the fact that this entity has played a major role in the creation of the current financial order, it is already in the process of forming what is perhaps the most aggressive alliance, as is currently being tested in the US: the alliance between the financial industry and pluto-cratic lobbies with a policy of nationalist resentment.3  How, then, can the financial regime’s consistent deformation of democratic princi-ples be stopped? On the one hand, after 2008 – and for a moment – the prospects in Eu-rope looked good: Major banks had voluntarily socialized themselves, solidarity move-ments arose, and sound proposals piled up that addressed the long overdue coordina-tion between monetary, fiscal, and economic policy. But all that is long gone; most re-cently, the separate banking system (the necessary separation between commercial and investment banks) demanded by all experts has died. On the other hand, the financial regime has asserted itself as a superior power combining the private creation of value with the use of the instruments of a sovereign authority in an even more efficient man-ner. Therefore, our pessimism today cannot be great enough. And this means: it is a question of sharpening a pessimistic realism that distrusts attempts at appeasement,                                                         3 In his Postscript, Deleuze seems to predict this trend: “It may be that older methods, borrowed from the former societies of sovereignty, will return to the fore, but with the necessary modifications.” (1992: 7)    Coils of the Serpent 6 (2020): 55-60  60 Vogl: The Financial Regime refuses to consider financial capitalism to be the best of all worlds, and renders the power of the financial regime as so illegitimate and unacceptable that it becomes the target of interventions, disputes, and struggles: This is not how one wants to be gov-erned.   For in the financial regime the following applies: Sovereign is he who is able to turn his own risks into dangers for others and manifests himself as a creditor of last resort. Or with a quote from Samuel Beckett: “To him who has nothing it is forbidden not to relish filth.” (2009: 19-20) translated from German by Simon Schleusener and Florian Cord   Works Cited Beckett, Samuel (2009). Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable. New York: Grove Press. Deleuze, Gilles (1992). “Postscript on the Societies of Control.” October 59: 3-7. Piketty, Thomas (2014): Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Srnicek, Nick (2017). Platform Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press. Varoufakis, Yanis (2015). “The Defeat of Europe.” transform! europe. 13 Aug. <https://www.transform-network.net/de/fokus/overview/detail/greece-decides-2015/the-defeat-of-europe/>. [accessed 29 Sep. 2020] Vogl, Joseph (2017). The Ascendancy of Finance. Cambridge: Polity Press. 

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