No more credit to Europe? Cross-border bank lending, financial integration, and the rebirth of the national scale as a credit scorecard

Bassens, David; Van Meeteren, Michiel; Derudder, Ben; Witlox, Frank

doi:10.1068/A4618

Title

No more credit to Europe? Cross-border bank lending, financial integration, and the rebirth of the national scale as a credit scorecard

Author

Bassens, David

Van Meeteren, Michiel

Derudder, Ben

Witlox, Frank

Abstract

The Eurozone crisis that erupted in 2008 has raised sincere doubts about the durability of political and financial linkages among its member states. This paper associates the resulting politicaleconomic stasis of the Eurozone with the coevolution of the financial and monetary system at the European scale. The argument builds on insights from financial geography, cultural political economy, and sociology of finance. It focuses on the idea that financial market rationalities, which fluctuate over time and space, are socially constructed through an interplay of acts of bricolage by state and market actors. We relate these rationalities to the main European initiatives regarding financial and monetary integration since the 1992 Maastricht Treaty. By tracing the geographical patterns of cross-border lending of European banks in the period 200310 we observe that two radically different rationalities of sound investment have dominated before and after the crisis. In the precrisis conjuncture of convergence, the Eurozone seemed to develop according to plan where the financial system appeared beneficial in terms of equalizing development. However, since the crisis there has been a conjuncture of contagion in which country-level specificities increasingly determine creditworthiness. Meanwhile, we observe that European policy makers try to refit the monetary system to this new market rationality to make the European scale perform again.

Language

English

Source (journal)

Environment and planning : A : international journal of urban and regional research. - London, 1974, currens

Publication

London : 2013

ISSN

0308-518X [print]

1472-3409 [online]

DOI

10.1068/A4618

Volume/pages