Professor Terrence McDonough:

That is relevant to one of the things I have been emphasising, namely, our current problems are related to what has happened in the financial sector and the financial crash. The other factors have to be taken into account precisely to explain why all of this money has flowed into finance, as opposed to its traditional destination as investments in productive capacity. That is substantially due to the other problems that have been manifest in the global neoliberal era, including the stagnation of demand due to repression of wages. If people cannot buy what is produced, there will not be investment in production. If businesses are not interested in buying investment goods because of excess capacity in global markets, people are not going to produce these goods and what are they going to do instead? They are going to funnel their money into financial instruments and to the extent that the money funnels into financial instruments, the prices rise and it looks like a good deal. Of course, it is not sustainable.