The dollar enablers and panhandlers: US capitalist power and the origins of the financialisation at the periphery

Abstract

Abstract The article discusses the political economy of financialisation in developing countries, defending that US power was crucial to driving it, while the indebted dependent states acted not only as dollar panhandlers but also as dollar enablers. To avoid excessively ‘outside-in’ apprehensions of US power in the capitalist bloc, we debate interpretations that use the concepts of structural power and internationalisation of the state to highlight some political effects of increasing international economic integration and capitalist wealth interpenetration. The theoretical discussion sets the stage for the presentation of declassified documents that illustrate how financial leverage has combined with some converging capitalist goals to entrench neoliberalism and financialisation in the Global North and the Global South. Our contribution serves to caution heterodox economists not to frame national autonomy only in terms of policy analysis, urging them to mobilise critical theory to imagine beyond the established frameworks for action.