شبح مالی: عواقب ناشی از نماد پردازی و کامپیوتری کردن بازار مالی

In a first step, we present the symbolic evolution of financial market that illustrates the growing “consumer-oriented” dimension of finance. We introduce then the technological evolution of finance, that derives from the growing computerization of finance. The third part of the paper shows that this double evolution in finance allows us to consider the financial market as a “hyper-market”. The financial market is then presented as a result of what Baudrillard calls a “hyper-reality”. In the last section, we show that this hyper-reality allows a plurality of theoretical interpretations of the financial reality.

The last three decades have been marked by a sharp and astonishing increase in the complexity of the financial reality. There seem to be two main causes to this evolution: the growing sophistication of financial products and the effects of the technological progress on the financial interaction. In this paper, we propose to analyze the increase in immateriality of the financial reality due to the sophistication of the products and to the deep change in the organization of the financial marketplaces. In this paper, we will propose to conjoin social theory1 and financial economics by studying the impact of the growing marketing dimension and the technology not only on the financial reality but also on the way of producing knowledge in financial economics. We would like to show that the contemporary finance can be considered as a double evolution. First, we will see that the new “consumer-oriented” dimension of the financial market tends to favor a “symbolic evolution” of the financial reality where financial markets are more and more presented as a game that we have to play if we want to be “in”. The second evolution is generated by the computerization of finance. This technological evolution increases the immateriality of the financial reality and contributes to the dominance of the “consumer-oriented” dimension. These symbolization and computerization of finance lead to a reflexive and a self-referent evolution of the financial reality. By considering the financial market as a simulacrum, this paper is in line not only with the analysis of reflexivity in the economic life proposed by Lash and Urry (1994) but also with the anthropological works that present a embedded financial market in a cultural matrix that determines its forms of transaction (see Callon, 1998 or Knorr-Cetina, 2006). Finally, we will emphasize the epistemological consequences of this double evolution in the last section of this paper by showing that the contemporary evolution of finance favors a theoretical diversification.

The beginning of the paper is dedicated to an analysis of the current evolution of finance. In a first step, we have presented what we call the “symbolic evolution” of the financial reality. Inspired by several authors (Shiller, Lunt), we argue that this growing symbolization illustrates the “consumer-oriented” dimension of finance where recent marketing methods present the financial market as a “fashion game”. We have also emphasized the speculative impacts of this evolution. In the second section, we have introduced the integration of new technology in the financial reality. This technological evolution derives from the growing computerization of finance mainly characterized by the automatic trading and the e-finance. The third part of the paper has showed that this double evolution in finance allows us to consider the financial market as a “hyper-market”, i.e. a supermarket where the investors can do “financial shopping”. We used the term “hyper-market” to emphasize the “consumer-oriented” dimension of finance and to present the financial market as a result of the hyper-reality described by Baudrillard. The double evolution (growing symbolization and computerization) observed in the financial world transforms the financial market in a simulacrum, a hyper-reality which has no referent anymore (but which still have some impacts on the economic reality). In the last section, we have showed that this absence of referent allows a plurality of theoretical interpretations of the financial reality. The fragmentation of knowledge that we can currently observe in financial economics can be considered as the epistemological consequence of the hyper-reality in finance. Inspired by what sociologists call social theory, we wanted to propose a particular reading of the evolution of the contemporary finance. This paper shows that this evolution of finance can be seen as a Baudrillan hyper-reality.