Poovey, Giddens, and Goody on the Signficance of Double-Entry Book-Keeping for the Modern Economy
Posted on | February 27, 2026 | No Comments
Citation APA (7th Edition)
Pennings, A.J. (2026, Feb 27) Poovey, Giddens, and Goody on the Signficance of Double-Entry Book-Keeping for the Modern Economy. apennings.com https://apennings.com/meaningful_play/poovey-giddens-and-goody-on-the-signficance-of-double-entry-book-keeping-for-the-global-economy/
Introduction
This post reviews the importance of double-entry bookkeeping with the works of Mary Poovey, Anthony Giddens, and Jack Goody. While these theorists position double-entry bookkeeping as a transformative technique of modernity, central to the abstraction and extension of economic knowledge, their emphases diverge in ways that reveal the complex operations of the Substitution-Abstraction-Symbolic Computing-Telecom Synchronization (SACT) “Stack” of Global Spreadsheet Capitalism.[1]
Mary Poovey’s A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society provides a foundational genealogical critique of how “the modern fact,” understood as a seemingly neutral, objective, and non-interpretive unit of knowledge, emerged within economic and social sciences.[2] “Her book explores how the fact became the most favoured unit of knowledge in modern times, and how description (in the shape of “facts”) came to seem separable from theory in the precursors of economics and the social sciences.” [3]
In her analysis, double-entry bookkeeping (pioneered in its codified form by Luca Pacioli in 1494, though with roots earlier) serves as a pivotal epistemological and rhetorical innovation. Poovey traces how this system, by mandating that every transaction be recorded twice (as debit and credit), enforced a formal balance, an equilibrium, where debits equal credits. This balance was not merely a practical technique for merchants but a profound rhetorical device.
It presented numerical representations as transparent, self-verifying, and detached from subjective judgment or moral/theological framing. By substituting “plain-speaking numbers” for earlier Ciceronian rhetorical excess (Today’s PR and Advertising), double-entry bookkeeping helped instantiate the modern fact as something that appeared value-free and politically neutral, even as it concealed its own rhetorical construction and the interpretive acts embedded in categorization, valuation, and recording. The “balance” thus became an epistemological achievement. It construed a way to produce apparently objective knowledge about wealth that masked its origins in mercantile interests and power relations, paving the way for later developments in political economy and statistics.
In contrast, Anthony Giddens approaches double-entry bookkeeping within his broader theory of modernity and structuration, particularly through concepts of time-space distanciation (the “stretching” of social relations across time and space) and disembedding mechanisms from local environments/markets. Giddens views such bookkeeping as a crucial storage mechanism that enhances the capacity to bracket or separate time from space, enabling the precise coordination and extension of social systems.
In works like The Consequences of Modernity and A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, Giddens emphasized how writing, codification, and record-keeping (including numerical systems) function as “storage containers” that allow the past to be preserved and made “presence-available” for future action — shifting from reliance on human memory or oral tradition to durable, reproducible media.
Double-entry bookkeeping exemplifies this by permitting the systematic tracking of inflows/outflows, credit extension, and capital accumulation over extended temporal horizons, which was essential for modern capitalism’s orientation toward calculated future risk and profit. This temporal dimension ties directly to Giddens’ notion of time-space power. Such mechanisms disembed economic relations from local, face-to-face contexts (system integration over social integration), facilitate surveillance and control across distanciated spans, and underpin the reflexivity of modernity by making accumulated knowledge continuously revisable and applicable at scale.
Goody and Writing
Giddens draws extensively on Jack Goody’s anthropological and historical investigations into the cognitive, social, and organizational consequences of literacy and writing. Lists, tables, and archival storage are central his theorizing the historical escalation of time-space power in social systems. In key works such as A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism (especially Volume 1: Power, Property and the State, 1981) and The Consequences of Modernity (1990), Giddens incorporates Goody’s insights to explain how writing functions as a foundational “storage mechanism” that progressively decouples social relations from immediate co-presence. This trait enables the stretching of social systems across indefinite expanses of time and space. Time-space distanciation thereby amplifies allocative (resource management) and authoritative (people management), the main determinants of power.
Giddens builds on Goody’s core arguments from texts like The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society (1986) and his earlier collaborations (e.g., “The Consequences of Literacy,” 1963, with Ian Watt). Goody demonstrated that writing is not merely a neutral tool for recording speech but a transformative technology that externalizes memory from the human mind to durable, inspectable media (e.g., clay tablets, papyrus, codices, ledgers). It also facilitates decontextualized knowledge such as lists, inventories, genealogies, bureaucratic records, and tabular formats that detach information from the flux of oral performance, allowing cumulative comparison, revision, and standardization.
As Max Weber pointed out earlier, writing enables administrative centralization and surveillance as written records (combined with the file and the “bureau” for storage), support taxation, census-taking, and legal codification. Writing facilitates the dissemination of religious doctrine across dispersed territories, countering the “tyranny of distance” and fostering center-periphery hierarchies.
For Giddens, these Goody-derived insights directly underpin his understanding of the generation of power through time-space distanciation. In pre-modern societies with limited or no writing, social integration relies heavily on presence and face-to-face interaction in localized, high-context settings. This absence constrains the scale and durability of domination. This scene from the movie Black Robe (1991) suggests the power of writing and its time-space machinations by exploring the inter-civilizational differences between a literate and an oral society.
Goody specifically addressed double-entry bookkeeping in his writings, notably within his comparative historical work on Eurasian economic history and his critique of Eurocentrism. In The East in the West (1996), Goody examines various cultural and economic factors often used to differentiate East and West, including a chapter specifically on “double entry bookkeeping” (Chapter 2, sometimes listed within discussions of “ragioneria” or book-keeping and the economic miracle). Goody challenged the notion that double-entry bookkeeping was a unique, enabling invention of the modern European West. He argued that it was part of a broader set of, often forgotten, technical and commercial innovations that existed across Eurasia.[4]
As a proponent of the “literacy thesis,” Goody analyzed double-entry bookkeeping as a “technology of communication” or a, writing-based technique for enhancing rationality and managing commercial transactions. He used the evidence of non-Western, such as Chinese, accounting techniques to challenge the assertions of historians like Max Weber and Werner Sombart, who argued that Western capitalist rationality was solely founded on such methods.
Goody specifically addressed double-entry bookkeeping in his writings, notably within his comparative historical work on Eurasian economic history and his critique of Eurocentrism. In The East in the West (1996), Goody examines various cultural and economic factors often used to differentiate East and West, including a chapter specifically on “the keeping of books and the economic miracle.” Goody challenged the notion that double-entry bookkeeping was a unique, enabling invention of the modern European West. He argued that it was part of a broader set of often-forgotten technical and commercial innovations that existed across Eurasia.[4]
As a proponent of the “literacy thesis,” Goody analyzed double-entry bookkeeping as a “technology of communication” or a, writing-based technique for enhancing rationality and managing commercial transactions. He used the evidence of non-Western, such as Chinese, accounting techniques to challenge the assertions of historians like Max Weber and Werner Sombart, who argued that Western capitalist rationality was solely founded on such methods.
Contribution to SACT Analysis
Within the operations of the Substitution-Abstraction-Symbolic Computing-Telecom Synchronization (SACT) “Stack” of Global Spreadsheet Capitalism, Giddens’ Goody-informed framework reveals writing/lists as the originary layer of symbolic computing and storage abstraction central to the SACT analysis.
– Substitution is when the oral, context-bound memory is substituted by external, decontextualized written records.
– Abstraction allows lists/tables to transform disparate relations into inspectable, manipulable symbols, enabling calculative power over time (future projection via accounts) and space (coordination across absence).
– Symbolic Computing emerges from the proto-computational iterative manipulation of stored symbols (e.g., double-entry balancing, census aggregation). It prefigures algorithmic processing such as the Hollerith electromechanical punched-card tabulator.
– Telecom Synchronization is enabled because writing synchronizes absent actors (e.g., via correspondence, edicts), laying infrastructural groundwork for telex and telecom-enabled global real-time ledgers.
Giddens thus reframes Goody’s literacy consequences not as discrete cultural shifts but as cumulative escalations in time-space power from localized oral societies, to early state bureaucracies, to capitalist nation-states, and finally to high modernity’s radicalized distanciation. This progression sustains the SACT Stack’s capacity for abstract, synchronized domination, where “balance” across global spreadsheets inherits the epistemic power Goody identified in writing’s storage logic, and Giddens theorized as a key part of modernity’s core dynamic, time-space power.
Conclusion
While each of these theorists position double-entry bookkeeping as a transformative technique of modernity, central to the abstraction and extension of economic knowledge, their emphases diverge in revealing ways it emerged and operates within the SACT “Stack” of Global Spreadsheet Capitalism.
Poovey foregrounds the substitution and abstraction layers. She points to the rhetorical substitution of balanced numerical facts for interpretive or moral discourse, creating an epistemological illusion of neutrality that underpins the symbolic legitimacy of economic “facts” in later spreadsheet-like aggregations.
Giddens highlights the symbolic computing and telecom synchronization dimensions. Bookkeeping emerged as a proto-computational storage and synchronization tool that enables temporal abstraction (future-oriented calculation) and spatial stretching (distanciation), by synchronizing distant actors through reproducible symbolic records. This techno-epistemological practice became a precursor to the telecom-enabled, real-time global spreadsheets that now orchestrate capital flows.
Poovey’s account is more deconstructive, exposing how balance rhetorically depoliticizes economic knowledge (aligning with critical histories of facticity), whereas Giddens’ narrative is more reconstructive, treating bookkeeping as an enabling infrastructure for modernity’s dynamic time-space power without deeply interrogating its ideological masking function. Together, they illuminate how the SACT Stack’s foundational “balance” operates as both a rhetorical/epistemological achievement (Poovey) and a temporal-storage/power mechanism (Giddens), sustaining the apparent objectivity and global synchronization of spreadsheet capitalism’s endless ledgers.
Notes
[1] Poovey, M. (1998). A History of Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society. University of Chicago Press.Poovey, M. (1993) “Figures of Arithematic, Figures of Speech: The Discourse of Statistics in the 1830’s,” Critical Inquiry. Winter, Vol. 19, No. 2. Giddens, A. (1983) The Nation-State and Violence. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Goody, J. (1986) The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society. Studies in Literacy, Family, Culture and the State. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
[2] Poovey is a literary critic and cultural historian, a professor of humanities at New York University, attached to the Institute for the History of the Production of Knowledge and the Department of English.
[3] Quote from Kevin McConway, The Open University, Milton Keynes, U.K. in his book review “Mary Poovey’s A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society.” DataCrítica: International Journal of Critical Statistics, Vol.1, No.1. See https://datacritica.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/book-review-mary-poovey_s-a-history-of-the-modern-fact-problems-of-knowledge-in-the-sciences-of-wealth-and-society.pdf
[3] Goody J. Rationality and ragioneria: the keeping of books and the economic miracle. In: The East in the West. Cambridge University Press; 1996:49-81. Also, “The Consequences of Literacy” published by Jack Goody and Ian Watt in the April 1963 issue of Comparative Studies in Society and History (pp. 304–345), argued that the shift from oral to written communication radically restructured human consciousness, cognition, and societal organization. It highlighted that writing, specifically alphabetic, enables “cold” analytical, and historical thought, differentiated it from the “homeostatic” present-oriented nature of oral traditions.
[4] Goody J. The East in the West. Cambridge University Press; 1996.
Prompt: Mary Poovey’s A History of Modern Fact offers one of the most penetrating accounts of how modern economic knowledge came to appear objective, factual, and politically neutral. Her analysis of double-entry bookkeeping is especially useful for understanding how the concept of “balance” in accounting and economics emerged and how it was originally a rhetorical and epistemological innovation. Compare her analysis with Anthony Giddens who saw double-entry book-keeping as a type of storage mechanism inferring the temporal aspect of his theory of time-space power.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Not to be considered financial advice.
Anthony J. Pennings, PhD is a Professor at the Department of Technology and Society, State University of New York, Korea and a Research Professor for Stony Brook University. He teaches AI and broadband policy. From 2002-2012 he taught digital economics and information systems management at New York University. He also taught in the Digital Media MBA at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas, where he lives when not in Korea.
Tags: A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society > Anthony Giddens > Double-entry bookkeeping > Jack Goody > Mary Poovey > time-space power > writing
Spreadsheets and the Modern Fact made Operational
Posted on | February 22, 2026 | No Comments
Citation APA (7th Edition)
Pennings, A.J. (2026, Feb 22) Spreadsheets and the Modern Fact made Operational. apennings.com https://apennings.com/technologies-of-meaning/spreadsheets-and-the-modern-fact-made-operational/
Introduction
Using Mary Poovey’s A History of Modern Fact and its description of the rhetoric of double-entry bookeeping, I review her work and apply it to spreadsheet logic and my SACT layers. SACT layers are Substitution – Abstraction – Symbolic Computing – Telecommunications Synchronization. This “stack” conceptualizes the primary aspects of spreadsheet capitalism and helps us understand its techno-epistemological impact in the world.
Mary Poovey’s work offers one of the most penetrating accounts of how modern economic knowledge came to appear objective, factual, and politically neutral. Her historical analysis of double-entry bookkeeping is especially useful for understanding spreadsheet capitalism and its SACT layers, because it shows that what we now treat as technical accounting practices were originally rhetorical and epistemological innovations developed over time. They were ways of fixing meaning and persuading readers that account numbers could speak truth independently of moral or political judgment and attest to the virtue of a new merchant class in Europe.
This is my second post on Poovey’s contribution. When applied to contemporary spreadsheets, Poovey’s work helps reveal that spreadsheet capitalism is not simply a more efficient continuation of accounting, but the culmination of a centuries-long effort to separate calculation from interpretation, and to naturalize that separation as “fact.”
Poovey’s Facts as a Rhetorical Achievement
Poovey’s central claim is that modern “facts” did not emerge spontaneously from empirical observation. They were produced through specific genres, practices, and techniques that taught readers how to trust certain kinds of statements and calculations while ignoring others. Double-entry bookkeeping, which spread through early modern commerce, played a crucial role in this transformation. It created records that appeared:
– Balanced rather than argumentative
– Mechanical rather than interpretive
– Objective rather than moral
By requiring every entry to have a corresponding counter-entry, bookkeeping generated an internal coherence that seemed to validate itself. The books appeared to “speak the truth” simply because they balanced, not because they represented reality exhaustively or fairly.
This was, for Poovey, a rhetorical triumph. The form of the ledger produced belief.
Double-Entry Bookkeeping as Early Substitution
Viewed through the SACT framework, double-entry bookkeeping was an early and powerful form of substitution. Goods, labor, debts, obligations, and relationships were substituted with numerical entries. Moral questions about fairness, exploitation, or risk were displaced by balances and totals. What mattered was not whether a transaction was less about whether it was just, but whether it was recorded correctly.
Poovey shows that this substitution allowed economic activity to circulate independently of ethical debate. The ledger became a space where social relations were translated into commensurable symbols, laying the groundwork for monetary abstraction. Spreadsheet capitalism inherits this logic but globalizes it.
Abstracting Narrative Accounts to Formal Balance
Poovey emphasizes that early bookkeeping manuals did not eliminate narrative entirely. They disciplined it. Narrative explanations were subordinated to tables, columns, and rules. And eventually even styles of penmanship.
This shift marked a decisive movement toward abstraction. Economic activity was no longer understood primarily through stories of trade or trust, but through formal relations between numbers. In spreadsheet capitalism, abstraction reaches its apex. Entire economies are reduced to cells, ratios, scenarios, and dashboards. Poovey’s insight is that this abstraction does not eliminate judgment; it repackages it. The spreadsheet appears neutral precisely because the interpretive work has already been encoded into its structure.
Abstraction leads to calculative capability. Political stability becomes a variable, climate risk becomes a stress test, and human behavior becomes a probability distribution.
Symbolic Computing: The Automation of Credibility
Double-entry bookkeeping required skilled human judgment to maintain consistency. Spreadsheets automate this requirement. Here, Poovey’s analysis becomes especially relevant. She showed that bookkeeping derived authority from its procedural regularity. Modern spreadsheets extend that authority by embedding procedures directly into formulas and functions.
Symbolic computing completes the rhetorical project Poovey describes. Spreadsheet calculations execute automatically. Errors are flagged algorithmically. Outputs appear authoritative because they are generated without visible intervention. In this environment, credibility no longer attaches to the accountant or the author, but to the system itself. The spreadsheet becomes a self-validating epistemic device.
Telecommunications Synchronization Ends Locally-Situated Accounting
Poovey’s historical actors kept books that were local, periodic, and retrospective. Spreadsheet capitalism eliminates those constraints. Telecommunications synchronization allows ledgers to update in real time across the globe. The “book” is no longer situated in a merchant’s office. It is distributed, continuous, and simultaneous.
This transforms the rhetoric of fact. Facts are no longer settled after the fact; they are produced continuously. Market prices, risk metrics, and balances appear as real-time truths that demand immediate response. What Poovey identified as a rhetorical achievement becomes infrastructural reality.
From Moral Economy to Spreadsheet Fact
Seen together, Poovey’s analysis helps clarify what spreadsheet capitalism achieves across the SACT layers. Substitution removes moral and social content by translating relationships into numbers. Abstraction organizes those numbers into formal systems that appear self-evident. Symbolic computing automates consistency, removing visible human judgment. Telecommunications synchronization enforces simultaneity, making facts feel universal and unavoidable.
The result is a global epistemology in which economic facts appear to exist independently of politics, even as they structure the possibilities of political economy.
Conclusion: Spreadsheets as the Final Form of the Modern Fact
Poovey does not argue that accounting is deceptive. She argues that its authority rests on conventions that are easily forgotten once they become routine. Spreadsheet capitalism represents the moment when those conventions harden into global infrastructure. What began as a persuasive technique becomes a planetary system of coordination. The spreadsheet does not merely record the world. It produces the conditions under which the world can be known and governed.[2]
In this sense, spreadsheets are the modern fact made operational. They inherit the rhetorical power of double-entry bookkeeping, extend it’s calculative capabilities through computation, and enforce it globally through synchronization. To understand spreadsheet capitalism, is not to reject numbers, but to remember that their authority was built over time, not given naturally.
Notes
[1] Poovey, M. (1998). A History of Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society. University of Chicago Press.
[2] Kevin McConway, The Open University, Milton Keynes, U.K. Mary Poovey’s A History of the Modern Fact:
Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society. DataCrítica: International Journal of Critical Statistics, Vol.1, No.1. See https://datacritica.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/book-review-mary-poovey_s-a-history-of-the-modern-fact-problems-of-knowledge-in-the-sciences-of-wealth-and-society.pdf
Prompt: Using Mary Poovey’s A History of Modern Fact and its description of the rhetoric of double-entry bookeeping, review her work and apply it to spreadsheet capitalism and its SACT layers.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Not to be considered financial advice.
Anthony J. Pennings, PhD is a Professor at the Department of Technology and Society, State University of New York, Korea and a Research Professor for Stony Brook University. He teaches AI and broadband policy. From 2002-2012 he taught digital economics and information systems management at New York University. He also taught in the Digital Media MBA at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas, where he lives when not in Korea.
Tags: double logic of remediation > Double-entry bookkeeping > Mary Poovey > SACT (Substitution - Abstraction - Symbolic Computing - Telecommunications Synchronization)
The Ghost in the Grid: Interpretants and Calculable Traces in Spreadsheet Capitalism
Posted on | February 15, 2026 | No Comments
Citation APA (7th Edition)
Pennings, A.J. (2026, Feb 15) The Ghost in the Grid: Interpretants and Calculable Traces in Spreadsheet Capitalism. apennings.com https://apennings.com/political-economy-of-media/the-ghost-in-the-grid-interpretants-and-calculable-traces-in-spreadsheet-capitalism/
Introduction
The spreadsheet, as a computational medium, transforms heterogeneous material realities into standardized, computable, symbolic inscriptions. To understand this transformation, semiotic theory offers two powerful but distinct conceptual tools — Charles Sanders Peirce’s notion of the interpretant and Jacques Derrida’s concept of the trace. While Peirce emphasizes the generative continuity of meaning through interpretive mediation, Derrida foregrounds the structural absence and deferral that inhabit all signification. Taken together, these frameworks illuminate how the numbers and letters populating financial spreadsheets function as representations of the messy, contingent world.
This post is the second of my theoretical essays examining spreadsheets within the context of the semiotic lens of Peirce and Derrida. The previous essay explains some of the background that led me to these authors, while this one elaborates on and combines the two into a more descriptive and theoretical account of what I call “spreadsheet logic.”[1] With additional help from Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin (1999) and their theory of remediation, as well as Daniel Chandler (2007) and Mary Poovey’s (1998) historical framing, I expand the argument that these digital grids are not neutral tools but combinations of maps and generative engines. They transform “messy” material reality into standardized, computable symbols of meaning and productivity, while also concealing costs behind the numbers, such as unaccounted labor and environmental damage.
The Interpretant and the Processual Trajectory of Financial Meaning
Peirce’s semiotics is organized around a triadic relation between representamen (the sign vehicle), object (that which is represented), and interpretant (the effect or understanding produced by the sign).[2] Crucially, the interpretant is not a subjective mental impression alone but another sign that continues the process of semiosis. Meaning, for Peirce, is therefore not fixed but recursively generated through chains of interpretants.
Spreadsheets instantiate this triadic process in a technical register. A cell value like “4.85%” functions as a representamen standing in relation to an object such as an interest rate instrument. Its interpretant emerges when that value is incorporated into a formula, a risk model, or a trading algorithm. The spreadsheet operationalizes Peirce’s insight that meaning unfolds through structured mediation. Each recalculation produces new interpretants, which themselves become inputs for further interpretation. In this sense, the spreadsheet is a machine for continious semiosis, a recursive environment in which written and numerical signs continuously generate further signs for feats of analysis, decisions, and action.
Moreover, Peirce distinguishes among iconic, indexical, and symbolic modes of signification. Financial spreadsheet cells are governed by symbolic conventions (e.g., accounting standards, legal definitions of assets). Yet they retain indexical elements insofar as they are causally linked to data feeds, transactions, or reporting processes. The spreadsheet thus mediates between symbolic abstraction and indexical traceability, structuring the translation of events into calculable form.
Derrida’s Calculable Traces and the Digital Inscriptions of Material Realities
Where Peirce foregrounds continuity, Derrida emphasizes différance, the deferral and differentiation that make meaning possible.[3] The trace designates the structural absence inhabiting every sign where each mark carries within it the residue of other marks and the deferral of full presence. Meaning never coincides with a pure origin; it emerges from a play of differences within a system of writing.
Applied to spreadsheets, Derrida’s concept of the trace exposes the abstraction inherent in financial inscription. A cell under the category of “Revenue” appears to present an objective fact. Yet this figure is the sedimentation of countless prior operations, such as transactions, accounting conventions, regulatory definitions, and technological infrastructures. Each number is a trace, an inscription that stands in for an absent, complex material process. The spreadsheet grid effaces the labor, environmental extraction, and legal arrangements that underpin the figure. What appears as immediate presence is, in fact, the result of iterative substitution and deferral.
Derrida’s notion of iterability explains how financial signs circulate. It combines the concepts of iteration (repetition) and alterity (otherness/difference), meaning every repetition changes the sign’s meaning. For a yield, benchmark rate, or collateral designation to function globally, it must be repeatable across contexts. Iterability detaches signs from origin, enabling their mobility. Note that Derrida is operating at the level of ontological conditions of signification. I extend this analysis with Mary Poovey’s notion of abstraction and modern fact to consider the historical practices of representation (double-entry bookkeeping and statistical reporting) within political economy.
In this context, abstraction does not merely detach signs from origin; it selects certain features of reality as measurable (modern facts) and excludes others. It produces standardized formats and establishes epistemic credibility. For Poovey, abstraction is a method of representing reality that produces commensurability and authority applicable to spreadsheet capitalism. Abstraction produces rule. A eurodollar deposit circulates globally because it is iterable, it governs balance sheets because abstraction renders it commensurable and trustworthy.
The content of a spreadsheet cell does not present a transparent fact but a deferred inscription. The value “Revenue” or “Net Present Value” appears as presence, an objective datum, but is “in fact” a condensed trace of prior inscriptions. Each number appears as a discrete numerical presence but is, in this regard, the stabilized remainder of a vast chain of substitutions. The crisscrossing of spreadsheet meanings suppresses the heterogeneity of these processes, rendering them abstract and yet commensurable.
Derrida’s notion of différance, the dual process of differing and deferring (like an exchange of gifts), helps clarify how spreadsheet logic stabilizes and fixes meaning. Values differ within the grid (profit versus loss, asset versus liability), and their significance is deferred across time through projections, forecasts, and derivative pricing. The spreadsheet’s promise of synchronic (concurrent time) clarity conceals the temporal deferral embedded in every calculation. Each value carries the trace of past entries and anticipates future recalculations.
Derrida’s critique of the metaphysics of presence is particularly relevant to financial computation. The spreadsheet promises immediacy in real-time dashboards and synchronized global feeds, yet its operation depends on iterability, the repeatable inscription of signs. As Derrida argues, iterability both enables communication and disrupts any guarantee of stable reference.[4] In financial systems, the iterability of numbers allows them to circulate globally in synchronized networks as collateral, derivatives, or valuations, but at the cost of severing them from the material worlds they index. The trace thus names the structural gap between the spreadsheet’s apparent clarity and the complexity it displaces.
Remediation and the Logics of Digital Inscription
Media theorists extend these semiotic insights into the technological domain. Bolter and Grusin’s concept of remediation emphasizes how digital media refashion earlier representational forms into the new media while promising greater immediacy.[5] The spreadsheet remediates writing, the ledger, the table, and the accounting book, emphasizing balance and offering the appearance of direct access to economic reality while intensifying abstraction and calculation through algorithmic manipulation. What was once handwritten accounting becomes a dynamic grid of media and computational interpretants.
Daniel Chandler’s semiotic approach underscores that all representation involves selection and framing (2007).[6] The spreadsheet grid imposes a classificatory logic. Rows and columns enforce discrete categories, standardize units, and delimit what counts as relevant data. What cannot be discretized, important items like ecological degradation, informal labor, and political instability tend to be excluded or marginalized, unless explicitly included.[7] These codes constrain and guide interpretants, structuring how numerical signs are read and acted upon. Thus, the spreadsheet is not a neutral mirror of reality but a semiotic regime that structures visibility and action.
The spreadsheet, as an executable grid, embodies this shift. Its formulas do not merely represent relationships; they enact them. Calculation becomes performative, shaping the very markets it models.[8] In this sense, the spreadsheet is not only a semiotic apparatus of meaning registration, but a technical infrastructure that reorganizes economic temporality and spatiality (time-space power).
From Messy World to Calculable Grid
Integrating Peirce and Derrida within media theory reveals a double movement in spreadsheet capitalism. First, through Peircean interpretants, financial data participates in an expanding chain of computational meaning-making. Symbols generate further symbols in recursive cycles of valuation and risk assessment. Second, through Derridean traces, each symbol bears the mark of what has been abstracted away. Traces remain of the labor, resources, and uncertainties that exceed calculation.
The spreadsheet’s power lies in stabilizing this tension. It converts contingent, qualitative phenomena into discrete, iterable signs that can be computed and circulated across global networks. Yet these signs remain haunted by the traces of what they exclude. The “clean” grid is shadowed by messy worlds that cannot be fully inscribed within it.
Thus, numbers and letters in spreadsheets are not mere representations of economic reality; they are semiotic operators within a technologically mediated regime of abstraction. Peirce helps us see how meaning proliferates through structured interpretation, while Derrida reminds us that traces of absence and deferral haunt every inscription in a spreadsheet cell. Together, they clarify how spreadsheet capitalism depends on the continuous transformation of material complexity into differential symbols that both enable global coordination and conceal the conditions of their own production. In this sense, the spreadsheet is not only a semiotic apparatus but a technical infrastructure that reorganizes economic temporality and spatiality (Giddens’ time-space power).[9]
Bringing Peirce and Derrida together allows for a dual account of spreadsheet representation. From a Peircean perspective, spreadsheets are engines of dynamic semiosis, recursively generating interpretants that coordinate economic action. From a Derridean perspective, they are surfaces of traces, where abstraction conceals the absent material and social conditions of economic production and financial representation.
Conclusion
Within spreadsheet capitalism, a numerical cell stands for an object (e.g., a mortgage, bond, or commodity). Its interpretant emerges when that value is incorporated into formulas, risk models, or portfolio allocations. Each computational output becomes a new representamen in a cascading series of references.
Spreadsheets therefore function as machines of semiosis. They operationalize Peirce’s infinite interpretive chain by embedding it in formulaic recursion. Meaning is no longer merely cognitive; it is executable. Financial systems continuously generate interpretants at machine speed, transforming representation into automated decision-making.
Peirce’s semiotics explains how symbolic forms acquire dynamism and generativity. However, it does not by itself explain how signs detach from origins or acquire institutional authority. For that, Derrida and Poovey are required. The grid is both generative and reductive. It generates meaning through iterative computation while reducing heterogeneous realities to commensurable signs. Numbers and letters do not transparently mirror the world; they stand in for it through structured processes of mediation and deferral. Derrida destabilizes the possibility of full presence while Poovey analyzes how modern systems stabilize representation despite that instability. Derrida reveals the impossibility of pure origin. Poovey shows how institutions construct the appearance of factual stability.
Together they produce financial time-space power. Double-entry bookkeeping, statistical tables, and financial reporting did not merely record economic activity; they created authoritative representations that could govern. Abstraction made disparate activities comparable and thus administrable. Where Derrida shows that detachment is structurally inevitable, mobility without origin. Poovey reveals authority without material presence.
Understanding spreadsheet capitalism through interpretants and traces reveals its epistemological power. It is not simply that the world is represented numerically; rather, the world becomes governable insofar as it is rendered into chains of interpretants and stabilized traces within a programmable grid. Meaning, value, and risk emerge from this interplay of semiotic recursion and structural absence, a dynamic that underlies the financial synchronization of global markets.
The spreadsheet cell appears factual and neutral. Yet it is the product of selection, framing, and exclusion. What is excluded does not vanish; it persists as structural absence — as trace.
Time-space power depends on this process. Global liquidity requires detachment from origin (iterability), recursive reinterpretation (semiosis), and institutional stabilization (abstraction). Yet the more synchronized and abstract the system becomes, the more it depends upon what it excludes: ecological limits, labor precarity, geopolitical instability. These excluded elements are not outside the system. They haunt it. The ghost is what returns when abstraction overreaches.[10]
Notes
[1] Spreadsheet logic isn’t just “rows and columns” but rather it’s an epistemology for organizing, calculating, and governing flows of information and value. Core elements include 1) Gridmatic Representation – Data arranged into cells (addressable, modular, and combinable) that allow any cell to be recomputed dynamically. 2) Formula-Driven Causality – Links between cells create a visible chain of dependency (A1 changes ? recalculates D5). 3) Conditional Visibility – Filter, hide, pivot — turning complexity into selective, user-controllable transparency. 4) Live Recomputation – Instant revaluation of positions or metrics when a single variable changes (what-if scenarios become governance tools). 5) Integration Layer – Modern spreadsheets (Excel, Google Sheets, Aladdin dashboards) act as brokers between local models and real-time external feeds (Bloomberg API, Reuters, exchange tick data, ESG metrics).
[2] Peirce, C. S. (1931–1958). Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss, & A. Burks, Eds.). Harvard University Press.
[3] Derrida, J. (1976). Of Grammatology (G. C. Spivak, Trans.). Johns Hopkins University Press and Derrida, J. (1982). Positions (A. Bass, Trans.). University of Chicago Press. The prompt I used was “Describe how Jacques Derrida 1982 book “Positions” used the notion of “trace” to refer to how writing replaces the world with abstracted signs. Also see Poovey, M. (1998). A History of Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society. University of Chicago Press.
[4] Derrida, J. (1988). Limited Inc. Northwestern University Press. Derrida’s Limited Inc. (1988) serves as the critical bridge between “writing” and “execution.” While spreadsheets appear to be dynamic, real-time mirrors of the economy, Limited Inc. allows me to argue that they are actually systems of iterability that succeed only by severing themselves from the “messy” material world. Remediated spreadsheets promise the logic of immediacy, the real-time dashboards that supposedly show the “truth” of an economy. Limited Inc. shows that every calculation is a “deferral” (différance). The value of an asset in a cell isn’t a “thing”; it is a trace of past transactions and a projection of future ones. By exposing the “structural gap” between the grid and the reality it displaces, we can see the spreadsheet is a technical infrastructure of power, not just a ledger.
[5] Bolter and Grusin (1999) first allowed me to “crack the code” of the digital spreadsheet by showing how the spreadsheet is a constellation of previous media that combine in new ways to empower the grid of spreadsheet logic to produce a more “authentic” version of mediated reality. Bolter, J. David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999.
[6] Daniel Chandler’s semiotic approach underscores that all representation involves selection and framing. See Chandler, Daniel. Semiotics: The Basics. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2007.
[7] Marilyn Waring’s classic If Women Counted (1988) bybook by New Zealand academic and former politician Marilyn Waring, provided a systematic critique of the UN system of national accounts, and challenged the international standard of measuring economic growth, that neglected women’s unpaid work as well as the value of the environment. She pointed to many resources that have been excluded from what counts as productive in the economy. https://www.roiw.org/1992/237.pdf
[8] Kittler (1999) argues that media determine situations. In digital finance, computation precedes interpretation. Signals are processed before they are understood. The spreadsheet is thus not merely representational but operative. It shapes markets through calculative execution. Kittler, F. (1999). Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Stanford University Press.
[9] In accordance with Anthony Giddens’ theories of historical materialism and structuration, Spreadsheet capitalism’s semiotic substitution – symbolic computing – gridmatic telecommunications stack produces time-space power over human and material resources. Giddens, A. (1983) The Nation-State and Violence. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press).
[10] The 2008 crisis revealed this ghost. When subprime mortgages were abstracted into AAA-rated securities. The underlying fragility remained invisible until it reasserted itself – violently.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Anthony J. Pennings, PhD is a professor at the Department of Technology and Society, State University of New York, Korea and holds a joint position at Stony Brook University as a Research Professor. He teaches Visual Rhetoric and IT, and AI/broadband policy. From 2002-2012 he taught digital economics and information systems management at New York University. He also taught in the Digital Media MBA at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas, where he lives when not in Korea.
Tags: Bolter and Grusin > Charles Sanders Peirce > Différance > interpretants > Jacques Derrida > semiosis > Semiotics
The Global “Balance Sheet” in Spreadsheet Capitalism
Posted on | February 2, 2026 | No Comments
Citation APA (7th Edition)
Pennings, A.J. (2026, Feb 02) The Global “Balance Sheet” in Spreadsheet Capitalism. apennings.com https://apennings.com/political-economy-of-media/the-global-balance-sheet-in-spreadsheet-capitalism/
Dr. Michael J. Howell, author of Capital Wars (2020) and a popular guest on many financial channels, is a financial analyst that I follow. Having worked in finance for over 30 years, and a former Research Director at Salomon Bros where he developed his theories of ‘Global Liquidity.’ He connects this with the ‘balance sheet’ that has been another important metaphor for understanding power, stability, and possibility in the modern global economy.[1]
The “balance sheet” is one of the most powerful instruments and also a metaphor in the modern global economy. At its most basic level, a balance sheet is an accounting snapshot in time that merchants have used for centuries.[2] It answers three questions: What is owned (cash, inventory, factories)? What is owed (Loans, bonds, payables)? And what remains once obligations are netted out? The net value (Wealth). On its surface, it is a simple accounting statement with assets on one side, and liabilities on the other, with equity as the residual.
In the parlance, the global balance sheet has become a way of seeing the world, a framework through which analysts, policymakers, and investors interpret stability, risk, and power in a system saturated with debt. It is a conceptual, schematic spreadsheet of the global balance sheet. It is not a literal accounting statement but a computational map of how spreadsheet capitalism organizes the planet’s assets, liabilities, and residual equity through the SACT layers.[3]
Think of this as the minimum viable ledger that financial terminals, central banks, and AI models implicitly negotiate and reconstruct every day. If the Fed anchors liquidity, financial terminals compute its reality. Bloomberg, LSEG, Wind, and Aladdin terminals do not hold the global balance sheet, but they are where its parts are assembled, visualized, stress-tested, and traded.
Spreadsheet capitalism builds a global balance sheet by transforming the messy world into synchronized, computable claims. Through substitution, abstraction, symbolic computing, and telecommunications grids (SACT), it creates a system in which liquidity governs outcomes and balance sheets define possibility.
In a debt-filled world, the central question is no longer who produces what, but how to expand balance sheets when stress arrives. The answer to that question increasingly determines economic stability, political authority, and global hierarchy. The balance sheet, once a bookkeeping device, has become the architecture, infrastructure, and index of the modern world’s political economy.
Michael Howell and the Liquidity Model
Howell’s CrossBorder Capital operationalizes the view of the balance sheet by arguing that in a debt-saturated world, the quantity of money (liquidity) matters more than the price of money (interest rates). Countries and corporations around the world have accumulated massive amounts of debt ($300+ trillion). This debt can rarely be paid off; it must be rolled over (refinanced).
Howell views the Global Balance Sheet as the mechanism that “warehouses” this debt, primarily as collateral. Central Banks and private financial institutions must constantly expand their balance sheets (buy debt/provide cash) to keep the system moving. But unlike a firm’s balance sheet, there is no sovereign accountant of the world. No institution has jurisdiction over all assets, liabilities, and collateral chains simultaneously. Instead, the global balance sheet emerges from the aggregation of many partial balance sheets, stitched together through spreadsheet logic, standards, and telecommunications.
This AI-prompted image of the Global Balance Sheet is suggestive of abstracted items, categorical indexes in their own right, of the areas of assets and liabilities that represent the world’s wealth.
A liquidity crisis occurs not necessarily when interest rates rise, but when balance sheet capacity shrinks or becomes unbalanced. If banks are scared or regulated into shrinking their balance sheets, no one buys the debt. When the refinancing mechanism jams, the global economy faces a cardiac arrest. For Howell, the Global Balance Sheet can be visualized as a hydraulic system. If the “flow” of liquidity stops, the “stock” of debt explodes, and the repercussions mount.
Howell’s liquidity model reframes macroeconomics around balance sheet expansion rather than traditional flow variables like GDP or productivity. In this framework, liquidity is the capacity of balance sheets to grow without triggering forced deleveraging. The major liquidity solution is the USD.
The US dollar markets are the circulatory system of that liquidity. Global liquidity expands when:
– US financial conditions are easy (Low interest rates)
– USD funding markets function smoothly (Sufficient US debt)
– Central bank balance sheets grow (Quantitative easing)
– Risk assets can be financed and refinanced (Collateral availability)
Conversely, liquidity contracts when dollar funding tightens, regardless of local conditions elsewhere. Howell emphasizes that global asset prices move less in response to local fundamentals than to changes in dollar liquidity. Trade deficits, direct foreign investment, foreign aid, and, in some ways, the US military bases have fed the world’s demand for USD. This is because the dollar is the predominant medium through which leverage is created and sustained globally.
Spreadsheet Capitalism: Constructing the World via SACT
“Spreadsheet Capitalism” is the theory that the economy is less driven by factories (the material) and more by the manipulation of symbols in grid-based, screen-based logic (the virtual). However, you cannot just put a company or a factory on a spreadsheet without it going through a translation process. This is where the SACT layers come in. This framework explains how the “messy world of things” is purified into a clean, alphanumeric/Unicode grid that registers on the Global Balance Sheet.
Spreadsheet formulas are the operating logic of the balance sheet. They do not just calculate totals; they structure how reality is represented, compared, and governed. In spreadsheet capitalism, formulas turn the balance sheet from a static report into a dynamic decision system that updates, reacts, and disciplines behavior in real time. In a debt-filled world, the balance sheet does not merely record economic reality. It organizes and enables it.
As mentioned before, a balance sheet asks: What is owned? What is owed? And what remains once obligations are netted out? For a household, this might be a home, a mortgage, and net worth. For a corporation, factories and intellectual property are offset by bonds, loans, and payables. For a government, the balance sheet includes infrastructure, taxing authority, and monetary sovereignty set against public debt.
What gives the balance sheet its enduring power is not its detail but its structure. By forcing everything into comparable categories, it creates the illusion of commensurability across radically different things: roads and derivatives, labor and leverage, forests and financial claims. This is why the balance sheet travels so easily from accounting into political and macroeconomic discourse. It offers a way to compress complexity into a form that appears objective, rational, and manageable, and yet scales into global significance.
Liquidity and the Balance Sheet Worldview
Financial analysts like Michael Howell have elevated the balance sheet from an accounting tool to a macroeconomic lens. In Howell’s work on global liquidity, the key insight is that in a world saturated with debt, outcomes are determined less by growth or productivity alone than by balance sheet capacity and the availability of liquidity.
From this perspective, economic crises like 2008 are not primarily failures of fundamentals. They are balance sheet events. When liquidity expands, asset prices rise, leverage is sustained, and risk appears manageable. When liquidity contracts, balance sheets tighten simultaneously, forcing deleveraging, asset sales, and cascading instability.
The focus shifts from income statements to stocks rather than flows, from earnings to funding conditions. Central banks, especially the Federal Reserve, become balance sheet managers for the entire system. Their asset purchases, swap lines, and collateral policies determine whether the global balance sheet can expand or must shrink.
Liquidity, in this view, is not money in the everyday sense. It is the ease with which balance sheets can grow without breaking. This makes equity epistemically fragile. A price change can erase it; A risk model can shrink it; A downgrade can destroy it. Equity is not directly observed. It is calculated. In global finance, this means equity exists because spreadsheet models say it does.
From the Messy World to the Global Balance Sheet
Spreadsheet capitalism is the infrastructure that makes this balance-sheet worldview possible at the planetary scale. The real world is disordered. Its goods decay, labor is heterogeneous, energy fluctuates, ecosystems regenerate unevenly, and political authority is contested. None of this fits naturally into a clean two-column statement.
The achievement of spreadsheet capitalism is to translate this mess into a global balance sheet, using the SACT layers as its organizing logic. Several factors need to be included, one of which is the ongoing process of tokenization, which works to itemize the messy world. Also, blockchains make that question more precise, more automated, and more global than ever before.
Substitution Turns Things into Claims
The first step is substitution. Physical assets, social relations, and future promises are converted into financial claims. A factory becomes a depreciable asset. A worker’s future labor becomes a wage obligation. A government’s authority becomes a bond. Risk itself becomes a tradable instrument.
Substitution does not eliminate material reality, but it displaces it. What matters is no longer the factory as such, but its valuation and its capacity to service debt. The world becomes legible as a collection of balance sheet entries. This is the moment when reality becomes financeable.
Abstraction Organizes the World into Balance Sheet Categories
Abstraction arranges these substituted claims into standardized categories. Assets are sorted by liquidity, duration, and risk. Liabilities are ranked by seniority and maturity. Complex processes such as supply chains, demographics, and climate exposure are reduced to variables that affect valuation. Abstraction allows for the comparison, aggregation, and stress-testing of radically different entities such as banks, corporations, households, and states within a single framework.
At this layer, the balance sheet becomes a theory of the world. Stability means matched maturities. Fragility means leverage. Sovereignty becomes fiscal space. Political uncertainty becomes a risk premium.
Symbolic Computing Makes the Balance Sheet Operate
Once inside the computer, these symbols can be manipulated mathematically. We can apply leverage, split them into tranches, insure them with derivatives, and project their value into the future using formulas (such as the Black-Scholes formula). The result is that the asset now has “financial energy” that can be moved, multiplied, and speculated upon at the speed of light, completely detached from the physical limitations of the original object.
Symbolic computing turns the balance sheet from a static description into a dynamic system. Spreadsheet formulas, financial models, and increasingly AI-driven systems continuously calculate liquidity ratios, duration mismatches, collateral haircuts, and stress scenarios.
This is where the balance sheet becomes active. It no longer waits for periodic reporting. It updates in real time. Small changes in prices trigger margin calls. Shifts in policy expectations reprice entire asset classes.
Judgment is embedded in formulas. Assumptions about risk, growth, and policy are encoded into functions that execute automatically. The balance sheet begins to govern behavior, not merely record it.
With Tecommunications Synchronization the Global Balance Sheet Comes Alive
Telecommunications synchronization binds these balance sheets together. Prices, positions, and risks are updated simultaneously across markets and time zones. Fiber optic cables, satellites, and high-frequency trading networks connect the spreadsheets of New York, London, Tokyo, and Shanghai. The balance sheet ceases to be local or institutional. It becomes global, interconnected, and continuous.
This synchronization is what allows analysts like Howell to speak meaningfully about “global liquidity.” Liquidity is no longer confined to a national banking system. It flows across borders through dollar funding markets, repo chains, and swap lines, all of which are synchronized in near real time.
This layer stitches all the local spreadsheets into one massive, pulsating Global Balance Sheet. It ensures that a change in the price of oil in Riyadh is instantly reflected in a balance sheet in Chicago. The result is a unified global market where “value” is determined by the synchronization of millions of connected spreadsheets. In this environment, a tightening in one part of the system is transmitted instantly to others. The global balance sheet expands and contracts as a single mechanism.
The Balance Sheet as a Worldview
The balance sheet’s power lies in its apparent neutrality. Mary Poovey’s A History of Modern Fact offers one of the most penetrating accounts of how modern economic knowledge came to appear objective, factual, and politically neutral. Her analysis of double-entry bookkeeping is especially useful for understanding how the concept of “balance” in accounting and economics emerged and how it was originally a rhetorical and epistemological innovation. They emerged as ways of persuading readers that numbers could speak truth independently of moral or political judgment.
When applied to contemporary spreadsheets, Poovey’s work helps us to understand that spreadsheet capitalism is not simply a more efficient continuation of accounting, but the culmination of a centuries-long effort to separate calculation from interpretation, and to naturalize that separation as fact. Numbers seem to describe reality rather than shape it. But spreadsheet capitalism reveals the opposite. The balance sheet is an active epistemology. It decides what counts, what can be measured, and what must be ignored.
Liquidity becomes the master variable because it determines whether the balance sheet can continue to grow. Debt becomes sustainable not because it disappears, but because it can be rolled, refinanced, and absorbed by expanding balance sheets elsewhere, often public ones.
In this sense, the balance sheet is both a tool and a metaphor for modern power. It explains why central banks matter more than legislatures in crises, why asset prices dominate politics, and why the global economy feels simultaneously integrated and fragile.
Conclusion
Unlike a firm’s balance sheet, there is no sovereign accountant of the world. No institution has jurisdiction over all assets, liabilities, and collateral chains simultaneously. Instead, the global balance sheet emerges from the aggregation of many partial balance sheets, stitched together through spreadsheet logic, standards, and telecommunications. Think of it less as a book and more as a constantly recomputed state of the system.
Spreadsheet capitalism builds a global balance sheet by transforming the world into a synchronized, computable set of claims. Through substitution, abstraction, symbolic computing, and telecommunications grids, it creates a system in which liquidity governs outcomes and balance sheets define possibility.
The ultimate question is no longer who owns the world’s assets,
but who controls the formulas that decide when assets remain liquid, solvent, and real. That is the true equity of spreadsheet capitalism.
In a debt-filled world, the central question is no longer who produces what, but whose balance sheet can expand when stress arrives. The answer to that question increasingly determines economic stability, political authority, and global hierarchy. The balance sheet, once a bookkeeping device, has become the architecture of the modern world.
Summary
The global balance sheet is an emergent object, not a master ledger
Unlike a firm’s balance sheet, there is no sovereign accountant of the world. No institution has jurisdiction over all assets, liabilities, and collateral chains simultaneously. Instead, the global balance sheet emerges from the aggregation of many partial balance sheets, stitched together through spreadsheet logic, standards, and telecommunications.
The danger, as highlighted by both Howell’s liquidity theory and the SACT framework, is decoupling. The Global Balance Sheet (built via Telecommunications and Computing) can expand infinitely. You can always add zeros to a spreadsheet. But the “Messy World” (Substitution) has physical limits. When the financial balance sheet demands more liquidity than the physical world can provide. This is the moment when the spreadsheet is forced to remember it is tethered to the real world. This is the moment of financial crisis.
Notes
[1] Howell’s idea is a conceptual, schematic spreadsheet of the global balance sheet. It is not a literal accounting statement but a computational map of how spreadsheet capitalism organizes the planet’s assets, liabilities, and residual equity through the SACT layers. Think of this as the minimum viable ledger that financial terminals, central banks, and AI models implicitly reconstruct every day.
[2] Mary Poovey’s History of Fact provides the “origin story” for Howell’s world. Howell’s Capital Wars are only possible because we have spent 500 years perfecting the Abstraction and Symbolic Computing that Poovey first identified in the journals of Renaissance merchants. The balance sheet isn’t just recording the economy; it is constituting it.
[3] A recent conversation with Dr. Greg Moses helped me consider the larger implications and how it connects to my work on spreadsheet capitalism and the SACT layers. Moses was important in helping conceptualize SACT because of our conversations about Peirce and semiotics.
AI Prompt: The “Balance Sheet” is a popular instrument and metaphor in the global economy, Describe what a balance sheet is and how it is used by financial analysts such as Michael Howell to describe the importance of liquidity in a debt-filled world. Describe how spreadsheet capitalism builds the global balance sheet from the messy world of things and processes, through symbolic computing, and telecommunications synchronization of the global financial system’s SACT layers of substitution, abstraction, symbolic computing, and telecommunications grids.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Anthony J. Pennings, PhD is a professor at the Department of Technology and Society, State University of New York, Korea and a Research Professor for Stony Brook University. He teaches AI and broadband economics and policy. From 2002-2012 he taught digital economics and information systems management at New York University. He also taught Digital Media at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas, where he lives when not in Korea.
Tags: balance sheet > Michael Howell > SACT (Substitution - Abstraction - Symbolic Computing - Telecommunications Synchronization)
Protected: Spreadsheet Organization Precedes Production
Posted on | February 1, 2026 | Enter your password to view comments.
Tags: AI computational governance > SACT (Substitution - Abstraction - Symbolic Computing - Telecommunications Synchronization) > SACT-AI > value form
Reviewing the New Deal’s Global Political Economy Framework and Its Current Challenges
Posted on | January 28, 2026 | No Comments
Citation APA (7th Edition)
Pennings, A.J. (2026, Jan 28) Reviewing the New Deal’s Global Economy Framework and Its Current Challenges. apennings.com https://apennings.com/how-it-came-to-rule-the-world/reviewing-the-new-deals-global-economy-framework-and-its-current-challenges/
Introduction
Before we lose January, I wanted to remind people of the preferred meaning of Jan 6 (Of course we will remember the attack on the capitol). In his 1941 State of the Union address on January 6th, FDR articulated the “Four Freedoms.” The first three (Speech, Worship, Fear) were standard democratic ideals, but the fourth was revolutionary for the US. “The fourth is freedom from want… which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants.”
From Four Freedoms to the United Nations and the End of Empires
FDR implicitly stated that globalizing the New Deal had become a US national security interest. While the “Four Freedoms” (Speech, Worship, Want, and Fear) were initially presented to Congress to justify aiding the Allies, they became the moral/political framework of the Atlantic Charter, a joint declaration that set the conditions for the US entering the war. Seven months later, FDR met Churchill secretly off the coast of Newfoundland in August 1941 to sign the Charter. Churchill wanted a military alliance, while FDR wanted to ensure the war wasn’t just about preserving old empires, but about creating a new global system. FDR wanted to end the colonial system and ensure a global trade regime based on maritime protections for all commercial shipping. FDR had the leverage and made the Atlantic Charter a prerequisite to the US entering the war.
The “Four Freedoms” served as the primary American draft for what became the Atlantic Charter. The translation happened across several of the Charter’s eight points.[1] The most direct “translations” appear at the middle and end of the Charter, referring to Points 5 and 6 (Freedom from Want). These points called for “fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field” and a peace that “will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want.” Point 8 (Freedom from Fear) mirrored FDR’s fourth freedom by calling for the “abandonment of the use of force” and the disarmament of aggressor nations. While Freedom of Speech and Religion were not explicitly named in the Charter’s final text (partially to avoid friction with the Soviet Union, a potential ally in WWII), they were encapsulated in Point 3, which asserted “the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live.”
The Atlantic Charter played a crucial role in shaping the ideological and institutional landscape that led to the decline of the British, French, and Dutch colonial empires. Its principles inspired movements for independence, including in India and Indonesia, ultimately contributing to the end of colonial rule in many countries. It also directly led to the rise of the United Nations, after the “Declaration by the United Nations” was signed in January, 1942 by the United States, the United Kingdom, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, China, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Costa Rica, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Poland, South Africa, and Yugoslavia. This Declaration was a pivotal point in world affairs.
The Atlantic Charter essentially “globalized” the Four Freedoms. By January 1, 1942, 26 nations signed the “Declaration by United Nations,” which explicitly cited the Atlantic Charter as its foundational document. This Declaration marks the beginning of the “United Nations.” Its first activity was “Bretton Woods, the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, held in July 1944 at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, that brought together delegates from 44 nations to establish a new post-war global economy (See Below). Immediately after, it kicked off the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in August–October 1944. Following the Yalta meeting among the Allied leaders, the Big Four (US, UK, USSR, China) drafted the “blueprint” structure of the UN, which included a Security Council and a General Assembly. FDR died on April 12, 1945, just before the UN was finalized at the San Francisco Conference in June 1945.
Was the New Deal Socialism? Building the US-led Global Economic Order
Except for Social Security, the term “socialism” was rarely used during the New Deal. It’s a small word considering the task ahead for the US and the global system. FDR’s plans even preceded Keynesian economics. However, he did “contain” finance, which he saw as an unruly system that led to the Great Crash of 1929 and its global instability. Part of that “containment” was a tax system with rates north of 90 percent for top earners.
To prevent a third World War, the Allies decided that the global economy needed an “engine” to manage exchange rates and rebuild shattered nations. In July 1944, delegates from 44 nations met at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. Their goal was to design a system that codified the Atlantic Charter’s promise of “economic advancement and social security,” FDR’s Freedom from Want.
Bretton Woods gave rise to two institutional pillars. One was the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which was designed to ensure exchange rate stability and prevent the “beggar-thy-neighbor” currency devaluations that crippled trade in the 1930s. The other was the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the “World Bank,” as it came to be called, was initially focused on the “Reconstruction” of war-torn Europe, but later expanded resources for the “Development” of what is now loosely called the “Global South.”
The mechanics of Bretton Woods focused on fixed exchange rates and the strict connection between the US dollar and Gold. The system was built on a Gold Exchange Standard, with USD pegged to Gold at $35 per ounce (oz). Each country defined its currency’s value in terms of dollars (e.g., the British Pound was initially set at $4.03) and committed to maintaining it. This peg provided the stability necessary for international trade to flourish, directly addressing the “Freedom from Want” by enabling predictable global markets.
The result was that the USD became the world’s major liquidity currency (initially hampered by Gold), the United Nations was created (but always hampered by the Security Council vetoes), and the US Navy became the ocean’s police, allowing countries like China to forgo their own protective navies and reducing the cost of their goods for countries worldwide. This system is currently under review.
It was a 15-year endeavor rebuild the US economy and to shape a new global system, expanding the New Deal into a world system with the Atlantic Charter, Bretton Woods, and the UN. The Marshall Plan pumped $18 billion into Europe to help it “reconstruct.”
But tensions increased between the US and the USSR, helping facilitate the Cold War. When the US dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it wasn’t just to end the war with Japan; it was a signal to Stalin. The US held a nuclear monopoly, which Stalin viewed as an attempt to bully the USSR into concessions in Eastern Europe. The National Security Act of 1947 created the Central Intelligence Agency and a security apparatus in the US government that unified the military branches under the National Security Council. Once the USSR detonated their own atomic bomb in 1949 (much sooner than US intelligence predicted), the race shifted to the Hydrogen Bomb (thermonuclear), so much for FDR’s freedom from fear. This was a leap in destructive power from kilotons to megatons.
When the West introduced a new currency (the Deutsche Mark) in 1948 to stabilize the economy, Stalin viewed it as an act of economic warfare and blocked all land routes to West Berlin. This forced the Berlin Airlift, the first major “hot” confrontation of the Cold War. The Western allies wanted to rebuild the German economy to stabilize Europe. Stalin wanted to strip Germany of industrial assets, as it did in China’s Manchuria as reparations to rebuild the Soviet Union.
In 1950, NSC-68 (National Security Council Report 68) became the definitive blueprint for the Cold War, effectively turning the “Four Freedoms” into a military-industrial mandate. Produced by Paul Nitze and the Policy Planning Staff, this document shifted the U.S. strategy from “patient containment” to “active rollback” and massive rearmament. It was a challenge to the New Deal-led containment of Communism, and aimed to liberate nations already under Communist control, such as North Korea when General Douglas MacArthur moved forces past the 38th parallel to eliminate the North Korean army, triggering a massive Chinese intervention and a retreat to a containment stalemate.
Reviewing the US-led “Rules-Based” World Order
The New Deal as a global “Allies” solution morphed in the 1970s when we reached the limits of the dollar-gold standard (Triffin Dilemma). and USD trade went electronic with Reuters Monitor.[1] US debt expanded to provide the new “gold” backing for the global currency with US Treasuries. Financial containment was ended, and taxes were reduced. Computer networks replaced the telex, and spreadsheet logic dominated the new political economy with the Bloomberg Box, Excel, and China’s Wind, digitizing and privatizing wealth.
Pan-capitalism broke out in the 1990s with the end of the USSR and the “Atari Democrat’s” World Trade Organization’s “new rules” framework that opened the world to IP networks through privatization, liberalization of services through GATS, and reducing tariffs on all sorts of electronic and digital devices. The WTO maded China and the other Asian Tigers very rich while privatized telecoms (like NZ Telecom) opened up the world to free video/voice calls, global services like software, and social media networks like FB.
But just as the gold in Fort Knox had its limits, the US public grew nervous about the federal debt. Both Democrat and Republican politicians used the US debt to instill fear in the US public. The US consumer’s trade deficit kept countries like China prosperous (As Ken Cao pointed out, the US is (China’s “Iron Rice Bowl”), and the USD global liquidity system functioning, but not without dollar shortages cropping up, as in 2008, and the persistent strong dollar we see today.
BRICS emerged as a “Second World” attempt to challenge the US-led world order by trying to seduce the Global South with the Belt and Road Initiative and calls for “de-dollarization.” But the failed SMO in Eastern Europe, and the breakdown of the Chinese economy, and India’s capture of Russia’s shadow fleet oil tankers have crumbled the BRICS initiative.
It did challenge Walter Wriston’s “information standard” and turned investment and reserve hold to gold. China’s CIP has made inroads into the world’s payment systems traditionally dominated by SWIFT.[2] Fintech innovations, including AI, represent a major challenge to USD dominance as we move into an era of blockchain and tokenization.
The Trump solution has been a chaotic mixture of “America First” tariffs, ending foreign aid, USD-backed stablecoins (2027), and military escalation. Resentment is building worldwide, but global money is still flowing back along the “Milk Road” into the USD.
And to Usher’s point, the US liberal/progressive movement does not have a major focus on the political economy, either domestically or globally. Even Obama used the “deficit” card as if the US economy ran on “household” economics that are limited by income and credit card debt. But debt expanded rapidly with COVID-19 reigniting concerns about the deficits.
That is why I think FDR’s vision for the Great Depression, the transformation of US industrialization, and decolonization and global economic enablement are useful data points to consider going forward for both the US and the global order.
Summary
In his 1941 State of the Union address on January 6th, FDR articulated the “Four Freedoms.” The first three (Speech, Worship, Fear) were standard democratic ideals, but the fourth was revolutionary for the US. “The fourth is freedom from want… which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants.”
Later that year, after the attack on Pearl Harbor and Hitler declared war on the US, these ideas became central Allied war aims, underpinning the Atlantic Charter (that ended the British Empire) and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was the pivotal point in world affairs. FDR implicitly stated that globalizing the New Deal had become a US national security interest.
The result was that the USD became the world’s major liquidity currency (initially hampered by gold), the United Nations was created (always hampered by the Security Council vetoes), and the US Navy became the ocean’s police, allowing countries like China to forgo their own protective navies and reducing the cost of their goods for countries worldwide. This system is currently under review.
Except for Social Security, the term “socialism” wasn’t used much in the New Deal. It’s a small word considering the task ahead for the US and global system. FDR’s plans even preceded Keynesian economics. However, he did “contain” finance, which he saw as an unruly system that led to the Great Crash of 1929 and its global unstability. Part of that “containment” was a tax system with rates north of 90 percent for top earners.
It was a 15-year endeavor rebuild the US economy and to shape a new global system, expanding the New Deal into a world system with the Atlantic Charter, Bretton Woods, the Marshall Plan, and the UN, all of which were resisted by the USSR, helping facilitate the Cold War.
The New Deal as a global “Allies” solution morphed in the 1970s when we reached the limits of the dollar-gold standard (Triffin Dilemma). and USD trade went electronic with Reuters Monitor. US debt expanded to provide the new “gold” backing for the global currency with US Treasuries as “pristine collateral.” Financial containment was ended, and taxes were reduced. Computer networks replaced the telex, and spreadsheet logic dominated the new political economy with the Bloomberg Box, Microsoft’s Excel, and China’s Wind, digitizing and privatizing wealth.
Pan-capitalism broke out in the 1990s with the end of the USSR and the “Atari Democrat’s” World Trade Organization’s “new rules” framework. The WTO opened the world to IP networks and digital devices, making China and the other Asian Tigers very rich. Privatized telecoms (like NZ Telecom) then opened up the world to free video/voice calls, web advertising, global social media networks like FB, and AI web data collection.
But just as the gold in Fort Knox had its limits, the US public grew nervous about the expanding federal debt. Luckily, the US consumer’s trade deficit kept China and the world economy moving. USD global liquidity system continued function, but not without dollar shortages cropping up, as in 2008, and the persistent strong dollar we see today. USD is strenghtened by the “Milkshake Theory” that drives surpluses around the world to the USD.
BRICS is a “Second World” attempt to challenge the US-led world order by seducing the Global South with the Belt and Road Initiative and calls for “de-dollarization.” But the failed SMO in Eastern Europe, and the decline of the Chinese economy, and the Indian Coast Guard boarding the dark fleet’s oil tankers have crumbled the BRICS’ momentum.
The Trump solution has been a chaotic mixture of “America First” tariffs, ending foreign aid, USD-backed stablecoins (2027), and military escalation. Resentment is building worldwide, but global money is still flowing back along the “Milk Road” into the USD.
The US liberal/progressive movement does not currently have a major focus on the political economy, either domestically or globally. Even Obama used the “deficit” card as if the US economy ran on “household” economics that are limited by income and credit card debt. But debt expanded rapidly with COVID-19 reigniting concerns about the deficits.
That is why I think FDR’s vision for the Great Depression, the transformation of US industrialization, and decolonization and global economic enablement are useful data points to consider going forward for both the US and the global order. “Socialism” is an insufficient concept to enact a successful democratic political economy.
Conclusion
This blog post argues for reclaiming January 6th as the anniversary of FDR’s “Four Freedoms” speech (1941) rather than the date of the Capitol attack. The post traces the arc from FDR’s “Global New Deal” to the modern digital financial order.
It posits that FDR’s inclusion of “Freedom from Want” was a revolutionary pivot that transformed the US New Deal into a global security strategy. FDR realized that US national security depended on global economic stability. This philosophy underpinned the Atlantic Charter (decolonization), the UN (political forum), and the Bretton Woods system.
The US Navy became the “global police,” lowering trade costs for the world, while the US dollar provided liquidity. Crucially, FDR “contained” finance with high taxes and regulations to prevent the instability of the 1929 crash.
The shift from Gold to Spreadsheets (1970s–1990s) describes the collapse of the FDR order due to the Triffin Dilemma (the limits of the gold standard). In the 1970s, the US shifted from backing the dollar with gold to backing it with US Debt (Treasuries). Financial containment ended. The “telex” was replaced by computer networks (Reuters, Bloomberg, Excel). This digitized and privatized wealth, leading to “Spreadsheet Capitalism.”
In the 1990s, “Atari Democrats” and the WTO opened the world to IP networks, enriching the Asian Tigers and China. The post argues we are now reaching the limits of this debt-based system. The BRICS attempt to “de-dollarize” and curry favor in the South via the Belt and Road Initiative. But BRICS challenges are crumbling due to the failure of Russia’s military operation (SMO) and China’s economic breakdown. Global capital is still flowing back to the USD via the “Milk Road.”
The “Trump Solution” is a chaotic mix of tariffs, stablecoins, and military escalation. Meanwhile, modern liberals fail to understand political economy, joining the Republicans in treating the US budget like “household economics” rather than a tool for industrial transformation.
Notes
[1] The eight points of the Atlantic Charter are 1. No territorial gains were to be sought by the United States or the United Kingdom. 2. Territorial adjustments must be in accord with the wishes of the peoples concerned. 3. All peoples have a right to self-determination. 4. Trade barriers were to be lowered. 5. There was to be global economic cooperation and advancement of social welfare. 6. Freedom from want and fear; 7. Freedom of the seas; 8. Disarmament of aggressor nations, postwar common disarmament.
A classic source on Bretton Woods and the Triffin Dilemma was Moffit, M. (1983) The World’s Money. NY: Simon & Schuster, Inc.
[2] Wriston’s interpretation of the Information Standard The Twilight of Sovereignty: How the Information Revolution Is Transforming Our World was organized around a rhetoric of assurance, not a critical analysis. He argued the power of multinational corporations, nation-state dictatorships, and any aggregation of power antithetical to democratic prospects will fall to the sovereign power of the information standard.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Anthony J. Pennings, PhD is a professor at the Department of Technology and Society, State University of New York, Korea and a Research Professor for Stony Brook University. He teaches AI and broadband policy. From 2002-2012 he taught digital economics and comparative political economy at New York University. He also taught in the Digital Media MBA at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas, where he lives when not in Korea.
Tags: FDR > Four Freedoms > New Deal
Global Liquidity Theory and the SACT Layers
Posted on | January 19, 2026 | No Comments
Citation APA (7th Edition)
Pennings, A.J. (2026, Jan 19) Global Liquidity Theory and the SACT Layers. apennings.com https://apennings.com/technologies-of-meaning/global-liquidity-theory-and-the-sact-layers/
Introduction
How does financial liquidity impact financial markets, asset prices, and geopolitical stability in the emerging context of an AI-driven political economy? Using my SACT (Substitution, Abstraction, Symbolic Computing, and Telecommunications Synchronization) layers framework, I’ll explore how Michael Howell defines and interprets global liquidity in his Capital Wars (2020), and how this liquidity impacts financial markets, asset prices, and geopolitical stability.[1]
Howell argues that modern financial markets are essentially debt-refinancing machines driven by liquidity (cash) rather than by real investment or fundamentals. In his view, asset prices (P) depend on the level of Global Liquidity (L) and investors’ risk positioning, not on traditional valuation metrics. He even encapsulates this as P = L × (P/L), meaning that a rise in liquidity proportionally inflates financial prices. This AI-produced image is suggestive of the processes that drive liquidity and as a consequence, asset values.
Howell notes that today’s global liquidity pool is on the order of $130 trillion, roughly two-thirds the size of world GDP. A policy of monetary easing tends to create asset bubbles (in stocks, bonds, real estate) while “high street” inflation stays low. In short, feeding the money-creation “engine” drives prices of existing assets skyward, but not consumer prices.
Howell measures liquidity as the aggregate balance-sheet capacity of the financial system. Liquidity includes not only central bank money but also the vast “shadow” funding markets (repos, commercial paper, eurodollars, etc.) that amplify credit. Because roughly 80% of lending is collateral-backed, crises in his framework come from collateral shortages, not mispricing.
When liquidity tightens (for example, when bond or MBS prices fall), margin calls trigger fire sales that cascade through the system. Thus, financial instability is an endogenous feedback loop: falling liquidity causes plummeting collateral values, which in turn trigger further liquidity withdrawals and forced selling. In this view, systemic risk is systemic. It is nondiversifiable. Credit and collateral chains bind all institutions together, so only broad “backstops” can arrest a collapse.
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Central banks play a key role in Howell’s theory as market backstops. He emphasizes that modern central banking is largely about the plumbing. It is about providing collateral support, not just setting interest rates. For example, the Fed’s quantitative easing (QE), repo operations and FX swap lines act to replenish cash and collateral in crisis. It acts as a Dealer of Last Resort for the system, providing liquidity to financial institutions that are experiencing difficulties.
Because the US dollar dominates global finance, the Federal Reserve effectively functions as the world’s lender of last resort. Empirical tests confirm that Fed liquidity expansions quickly ripple into asset markets. For instance, Howell finds the Fed’s balance sheet moves lead Bitcoin and other markets by several weeks. Conversely, Fed-driven dollar shortages (as in 2008 or 2020) trigger global “risk-off” episodes, since roughly 60% of world trade is dollar-denominated.
In Howell’s framework, therefore, liquidity expansions fuel booms (often inflating collateral values), while liquidity contractions precipitate busts via frozen funding and margin spirals.
Liquidity and the SACT Layers of Spreadsheet Capitalism
Howell’s liquidity paradigm can be linked to the SACT (Substitution–Abstraction–Symbolic Computing–Telecommunications) stack of “spreadsheet capitalism,” which describes how finance is digitized in layers starting with the substitution of the world’s items and processes, decontextualizes them so they can be categorized, and computes them in various formulas, and synchronizes the fruits of those calculations globally.
Substitution
Illiquid economic value is substituted by paper or digital claims on spreadsheets. For example, mortgages, loans or real assets are pooled and securitized or tokenized onto ledgers, converting them into tradable securities. In this way liquidity literally substitutes for real collateral. As Vladimir Gorshkov at State Street observes, “in tokenized form, assets are easier to move, and hence easier to trade, transfer, lend and borrow.”
Howell’s liquidity logic relies on this mechanism. By transforming fixed claims into liquid instruments, the global balance sheet expands, allowing new funding flows.
Abstraction
These liquid claims and flows are then quantified in spreadsheets and models. Liquidity shows up as numeric inputs in performance metrics, risk models or spreadsheets (for example, as global money?supply indices, safe-asset supplies or repo rates). In Howell’s terms, central banks and analysts track the financial sector balance-sheet capacity as a key variable.
The SACT “stack” literally turns the world into rows and columns of numbers. Modern trading platforms use formulas (NPV, VaR, FX conversions, etc.) to translate economic positions into cell values. In practice, global liquidity indices and spreadsheet models compute how much cash and collateral is available, feeding those figures into algorithms that value portfolios and assess risk.[2]
Symbolic Computing
Added to the spreadsheet layout are automated algorithms and AI. These “symbolic processors” (quant trading programs, risk engines, AI forecasters) ingest the liquidity data and act on it. For instance, a trading algorithm might use a VaR model (built on liquidity inputs) to rebalance a bond fund, or an AI “robo-treasurer” might forecast funding needs from a policy change. Howell’s own work highlights this: tools like BlackRock’s Aladdin or even private AI are constantly interpreting liquidity as numeric signals.
The result is fully automated “intragroup” liquidity movements in seconds, tightening hedges and delivering real-time treasury functions. This exemplifies the symbolic layer where algorithms turn liquidity numbers into trading decisions.
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Telecommunications Synchronization
Finally, high-speed networks synchronize markets around those numbers. Real-time data feeds tie global exchanges and terminals into one grid. As Pennings notes, the USD’s hegemony is reinforced by a “networked grid of financial terminals” that run these spreadsheets simultaneously worldwide.[2]
In effect, liquidity shocks propagate instantaneously through this telecom layer. For example, a Fed liquidity injection in New York is immediately reflected in price quotes in London and Hong Kong. Howell’s theory assumes such synchronization. When global liquidity rises or falls, markets from equities to foreign exchange move in unison, reflecting the connected spreadsheet infrastructure.
Toward an AI-Driven Political Economy
Looking ahead, these trends suggest a transition to an economy where liquidity is managed by code as much as by policy. Central banks and firms are increasingly treating money and assets as programmable, real?time instruments. For example, major financial institutions are issuing tokenized deposits and stablecoins that settle 24/7. One notable project combines 24/7 blockchain rails with tokenized bank deposits and a large AI model to create a global treasury network.
Stablecoins and tokenized U.S. Treasuries are already handling trillions of dollars in global payments (Tether/USDC move approximately $33 trillion annually). In parallel, central banks recognize that AI will reshape policy. The BIS urges that regulators must “anticipate AI’s effects” on markets and harness AI tools in their own operations.
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Conclusion
The convergence of Howell’s liquidity view and the SACT framework points to movement towards an automated, AI-governed finance where liquidity flows are tracked and even managed by algorithms (big-data stress tests, smart contracts, real-time token-ledgers) rather than solely by traditional politics.
Economies that have been operationalizing the SACT layers will move to continuous, machine-enforced “balance sheets” where every dollar or digital token is coded and monitored. This suggests a new political economy in which policy and markets are coded into the very fabric of the globalized financial spreadsheet terminals, requiring us to think of liquidity as a computational resource (subject to AI control) as much as a purely political one.
Summary
The blog post examines the intersection of Michael Howell’s financial theories and the SACT framework of Spreadsheet Capitalism to explain how global markets function, and how they are transitioning to an AI-driven era. It begins by presenting Howell’s core argument from his book Capital Wars which posits that modern financial markets are no longer driven by traditional investment or fundamentals but are instead giant debt-refinancing machines fueled contingently by liquidity.
In this view asset prices are determined mathematically by the level of global liquidity and the risk positioning of investors rather than by the actual value of the underlying assets. Howell encapsulates this relationship in a formula where a rise in liquidity proportionally inflates market prices. He notes that the global liquidity pool has grown to roughly $130 trillion which is significantly larger than the world GDP. Consequently, when central banks engage in monetary easing they tend to create asset bubbles in stocks and real estate rather than driving up consumer prices on the “high street.”
The narrative explains that Howell measures liquidity as the aggregate balance-sheet capacity of the financial system including both central bank money and the vast shadow funding markets. Because the majority of lending is backed by collateral, financial crises in this framework are caused by collateral shortages rather than mispricing. When liquidity tightens and collateral values fall it triggers a feedback loop of margin calls and forced selling that can only be stopped by central banks acting as the dealer of last resort.
The post then maps this liquidity paradigm onto the SACT layers of Spreadsheet Capitalism to show how the physical world is converted into financial data. It starts with Substitution where illiquid real-world items like mortgages or land are substituted by paper or digital claims. This legal process transforms physical objects into tradable liquid instruments that expand the global balance sheet. Next is Abstraction where these claims are decontextualized into spreadsheet cells and tracked as numeric inputs in risk models. This turns the complex world into simple rows and columns of data that can be processed by financial algorithms.
The process accelerates in the Symbolic Computing layer where automated algorithms and increasingly AI ingest this liquidity data to make trading decisions without human intervention. Finally the Telecommunications Synchronization layer links these disparate spreadsheets into a single unified grid. High-speed networks ensure that a liquidity shock in New York is felt instantly in London or Hong Kong as the entire system moves in unison. Programs like BlackRock’s Aladdin use these inputs to move capital instantly across the globe.
The summary concludes by looking toward an AI-driven political economy where liquidity is increasingly managed by code. As programmable money and smart contracts become more prevalent, the global economy is transitioning to a system of machine-enforced balance sheets. In this future, financial stability becomes a matter of software engineering and algorithmic governance as much as political policy.
Notes
[1] Most insights on geopolitical stability and financial liquidity are from Michael Howell, CEO of Crossborder Capital, and his book Capital Wars: The Rise of Global Liquidity (2020), focusing on the global balance sheet.
[2] From my talk to the Computer Science Department at SUNY Korea on Friday, October 24, 2025.
[3]The SACT Layers of Spreadsheet Capitalism include Substitution (The Legal Layer), where illiquid real-world items (mortgages, land) are substituted by paper or digital claims (securities, tokens). This process turns physical collateral into tradable liquid instruments, expanding the balance sheet. Abstraction (The Financial Layer) is where claims are decontextualized into spreadsheet cells. Liquidity is tracked as numeric inputs in risk models (e.g., VaR) and indices, converting economic positions into raw data. Symbolic Computing (The Algorithmic Layer) involves algorithms (like BlackRock’s Aladdin) that ingest this liquidity data to formulate trading and other financial decisions. “Symbolic processors” turn liquidity numbers into instant capital movements without human intervention. Telecommunications (The Global Synchronization Layer) involves high-speed networks that synchronize these spreadsheets globally. A liquidity shock in New York propagates instantly to London or Hong Kong via the “networked grid of financial terminals.”
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Not to be considered financial advice.
Anthony J. Pennings, PhD is a professor at the Department of Technology and Society, State University of New York, Korea and a Research Professor for Stony Brook University. He teaches AI and broadband policy. From 2002-2012 he taught digital economics and information systems management at New York University. He also taught in the Digital Media MBA at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas, where he lives when not in Korea.
Tags: Abstraction > balance sheet > Global Liquidity > SACT (Substitution - Abstraction - Symbolic Computing - Telecommunications Synchronization) > Symbolic computing
Silver, Anchored by Spreadsheet Logic
Posted on | January 11, 2026 | No Comments
Citation APA (7th Edition)
Pennings, A.J. (2026, Jan 11) Silver, Anchored by Spreadsheet Logic. apennings.com https://apennings.com/enterprise-systems/silver-anchored-by-spreadsheet-logic/
Introduction
Silver, like gold, occupies a distinctive position in the global financial system because it exists simultaneously as a physical material, an industrial input, and a financial asset. Its movement from the ground to the balance sheet illustrates with unusual clarity how the SACT layers of spreadsheet capitalism operate across the global financial infrastructure. Using my Substitution, Abstraction, Symbolic Computing, and Telecommunications Synchronization (SACT) framework, we can analyze how silver is mined, abstracted, computed, and traded through the global financial system that governs commodity metal markets.[1]
As physical material, silver has excellent electrical/thermal conductivity, as well as antimicrobial properties, which are highly valued for industrial applications in electronics, medical devices, solar panels, and chemical reactions. It’s a strong solder for electrical contacts and brazing alloys. Its antibacterial properties make it valuable for water purification and medical uses (e.g., dressings, instruments). It is an essential catalyst in producing chemicals such as ethylene oxide, used in antifreeze and plastics. With growing demand driven by clean energy technologies like solar panels and EVs, industrial demand for silver is increasing rapidly.
Silver’s modern life unfolds less on trading floors than inside financial terminals and the dense computational environments where spreadsheets, models, and real-time data converge. Platforms such as BlackRock’s Aladdin, Bloomberg’s “Box,” LSEG’s Workspace, and China’s Wind do not merely display silver prices; they organize how silver is seen, valued, hedged, and governed. Across all of them, the USD functions as the universal reference frame, anchoring substitution, abstraction, computation, and synchronization at a planetary scale.[2] Silver may be dug from the earth, but its economic power today is exercised throughout networked digital terminals.
In each terminal, silver appears first as a ticker (XAG/USD for spot silver, SI for silver futures), a symbol that substitutes physical metal with a continuous numerical stream. Whether it is spot silver, COMEX futures, OTC forwards, ETFs, or options, the terminal renders silver as a time-series ready for computation.
Symbolic computing is where terminals stop being informational and become governing technologies. The metal is continuously transformed into a set of executable relationships — prices, probabilities, correlations, and constraints — that allow silver to function as a global financial instrument. When explicitly placed within the SACT framework, symbolic computing emerges as the layer in which silver’s physical reality is subordinated to calculative authority and in which spreadsheet logic actively produces market behavior rather than merely reflecting it.
It is useful to examine each of the terminals in more detail to look at their similarities across terminals, which mask important differences in emphasis:
– Bloomberg prioritizes market discovery and cross-asset comparison.
– LSEG Workspace (formerly Refinitiv Workspace/Eikon) emphasizes benchmark pricing, compliance, and institutional workflows.
– Aladdin embeds silver (XAG) as a financial instrument inside portfolio-wide risk and optimization systems.
– Wind integrates silver into China’s industrial planning, hedging, and macro-financial analysis.
Despite these differences, all operate within the same underlying logic of spreadsheet capitalism. Silver is not marketed simply by supply and demand in the physical sense. Instead, it is governed by how its material reality is progressively transformed into calculable, tradable, and synchronized symbols. Silver is governed in real time and denominated primarily in USD. What follows situates silver trading inside these spreadsheet-based financial terminals using the SACT framework and shows why dollar centrality is not incidental but structural for silver commodity markets.
Substitution Transforms Silver from Ore to Standardized Units
Silver begins as a geographically embedded material resource. It is mined primarily as a byproduct of copper, lead, zinc, and gold extraction. Supply originates mainly from countries such as Mexico, Peru, China, Australia, and Poland. At the mine level, silver exists as ore with varying grades, impurities, and extraction costs. None of this heterogeneity is directly tradable in global markets.
Substitution is the first step that allows silver to enter the spreadsheet economy. Assays translate ore into grams or ounces of recoverable silver. Refining processes then substitute this heterogeneous material into standardized forms such as bars, ingots, coins, or grain with certified purity, typically .999 or .9999 fine.
The physical complexities of geology and metallurgy are replaced by standardized units such as the troy ounce, the global accounting unit for precious metals. Mining output is converted into standardized measures: grams per ton of ore, ounces recovered, purity levels.
Crucially, silver substituted into troy ounces becomes the universal unit that allows silver mined under radically different conditions to become exchangeable. Once denominated in ounces, silver is no longer Peruvian or Chinese or Australian. It is globally fungible. At this point, silver exists less as metal than as a set of numbers capable of being priced, hedged, and pledged as collateral.
In SACT terms, silver becomes a quantity multiplied by purity, recovery rate, and cost. These figures are immediately translated into spreadsheet columns and rows. The mine itself becomes a production profile: costs per ounce, recovery rates, reserve estimates, expected mine life. Once this substitution is complete, silver is no longer tied to a specific mine or geography.
Silver Abstracted as Category, Inventory, and Balance-Sheet Entry
After substitution, silver is abstracted. Abstraction removes silver from its physical context and embeds it within financial categories. It is classified, categorized, and represented in forms that enable governance and comparison across networked space. In spreadsheets across banks, commodity traders, and hedge/sovereign funds, silver is no longer tracked as bars or coins but as:
– Spot prices
– Forward curves
– Inventory levels
– Cost curves
– Volatility measures
– Correlations with gold, copper, inflation, and currencies
Each abstraction corresponds to a different spreadsheet model. In corporate spreadsheets, silver appears as inventory, reserves, or byproduct revenue. In national accounts, it is recorded as part of mineral output and export earnings. In financial markets, it becomes a commodity class with standardized tickers and contract specifications.
Abstraction strips silver of its physical idiosyncrasies. A bar in a London vault, a futures contract in New York, and a mining reserve estimate in Peru can be compared and aggregated because they are all rendered within the same abstract categories. Spreadsheet logic governs silver not as a metal but as a set of variables: quantity, grade, price, volatility, and correlation. This abstraction allows silver to be integrated into portfolios, indexes, and risk models alongside equities, bonds, and currencies, despite its very different material origins.
Mining companies are valued using discounted cash flow models based on expected silver output. Industrial users treat silver as an input cost to be minimized. Investors treat it as a macro signal tied to monetary conditions. These abstractions allow silver to circulate across institutional domains that never touch the physical metal. A solar panel manufacturer in Germany, a hedge fund in New York, and a central bank analyst in Asia all “see” silver through different spreadsheet lenses, yet they coordinate through shared abstractions.
Symbolic Computing Determines Pricing, Hedging, and Leverage
Symbolic computing is where silver’s financial life unfolds. Pricing, trading, and risk management are executed through formulas embedded in spreadsheets, throughout trading systems, and within financial models. Silver prices are derived from continuous symbolic computation of spot prices, futures curves, options models, and arbitrage relationships. A mine’s expected output feeds into discounted cash flow models. Refiners hedge exposure using forward contracts. Manufacturers lock in costs using derivatives. Investors model silver futures as a hedge against inflation, currency debasement, or geopolitical risk.
Formulas determine margin requirements, collateral haircuts, and position limits. A rise in volatility triggers automated adjustments. These calculations do not merely reflect the silver market; they shape it. Capital flows respond to spreadsheet outputs long before physical silver moves.
At the compute level, silver functions less as metal and more as a mathematical object whose value emerges from computational relationships. Silver prices are produced not by direct exchange of metal, but by continuous calculation across futures markets, options chains, and derivative contracts. Spreadsheets and trading systems compute:
– Spot prices from futures curves
– Implied volatility from options
– Margin requirements from price swings
– Hedge ratios for producers and consumers
A mining company hedges future production by locking in prices through futures contracts. A trader models silver’s sensitivity to interest rates or dollar strength. An ETF issuer balances physical holdings against share creation and redemption flows. These are not descriptive acts. They are performative. The formulas used to model silver directly influence how much is mined, stored, or sold. Symbolic computing does not merely reflect silver’s value; it helps create it.
This is where silver’s dual nature becomes visible. It is one of the few commodities where “paper” claims vastly exceed physical supply, making spreadsheet representations more liquid than the metal itself.
Telecommunications Synchronization Creates One Price in Many Places
The global silver market synchronizes through telecommunications networks that link exchanges, vaults, refiners, banks, and traders in real time. Prices discovered on the COMEX in New York, the LBMA in London, and exchanges in Shanghai and Mumbai update continuously across the spreadsheet logic of globally networked financial terminals.
This synchronization enforces the “law of one price” despite vast differences in geography. A supply disruption in Mexico or a surge in industrial demand in China is instantly incorporated into global prices. Silver’s market time becomes universal.
Spreadsheet terminals drawing from live data feeds ensure that mining companies, bullion banks, and investors around the world respond simultaneously. Inventory reports, warehouse receipts, and delivery notices are transmitted instantly. Decisions made in one financial center propagate globally within seconds, coordinating behavior without direct communication.
This synchronization produces a single operational silver price despite fragmented physical markets. A mine shutdown in Mexico, a solar subsidy announcement in Europe, or a change in US interest rates is absorbed into the global price within seconds. Time–space distanciation is total. Silver mined today is priced against expectations of industrial demand, monetary policy, and speculative flows years into the future.
Silver as a Hybrid Asset in Spreadsheet Capitalism
Silver’s uniqueness lies in its hybrid role. It is both a monetary metal and an industrial input. This dual identity is handled through spreadsheet logic rather than political decree.
Industrial demand for electronics, solar panels, and medical applications is modeled as consumption curves. Investment demand is modeled as portfolio allocation. These distinct uses coexist in the same spreadsheets, allowing silver to oscillate between commodity, hedge, and speculative asset depending on modeled conditions.
This hybridity makes silver especially sensitive to shifts in abstraction and symbolic computing. Changes in inflation expectations, green energy policies, or monetary regimes can reclassify silver’s role almost instantly within financial models.
This substitution does more than simplify trade. It places silver inside the dollar liquidity system, making access to silver markets contingent on access to USD funding, dollar clearing banks, and dollar-based credit lines.
Terminals reinforce this substitution by default. Even when local currency views are available, the primary frame is USD. Silver’s global fungibility depends on this monetary anchor.
Silver as a Dollar-Synchronized Spreadsheet Asset
Silver’s journey through Aladdin, Bloomberg, LSEG, and Wind reveals how deeply commodity markets are embedded in spreadsheet capitalism. These terminals do not merely reflect silver markets; they constitute them by defining how silver is substituted, abstracted, computed, and synchronized.
At the center of this system sits the USD, not as ideology, but as infrastructure. The dollar enables silver to function as a global financial instrument rather than a regional metal. It allows spreadsheets in New York, London, Beijing, and Zurich to speak the same numerical language.
Silver may be dug from the earth, but its power today is exercised in spreadsheet-based financial terminals. It is priced in dollars, governed by formulas, synchronized across networks, and traded less as metal than as a financial signal within the global USD-based spreadsheet order.
In this sense, silver is not a relic of pre-modern money. It is a living example of how ancient materials are absorbed into the most advanced architectures of time–space power.
Conclusion: Silver as Material Anchored by Spreadsheet Logic
Silver’s journey from mine to market illustrates how global finance governs material reality through SACT layers. The metal itself does not circulate freely; its spreadsheet representations do. Substitution standardizes it. Abstraction categorizes it. Symbolic computing prices and allocates it. Telecommunications synchronization ensures that this process operates globally and continuously.
In spreadsheet capitalism, silver remains valuable precisely because it is material, scarce, and physically constrained. Yet its power and price are determined less by where it is mined than by how it is calculated. Silver stands as a rare bridge between the physical world and the abstract financial architectures that now coordinate global political economies.
Notes
[1] I developed the SACT layers approach in July 2025 while reviewing my previous work on spreadsheets, and specifically examing the notion of substitution using ideas from semiotics and the semosis of formulas, as well as a personal favorite, Mary Poovey’s History of Modern Fact.
[2] Much of my application of the SACT layers has been to examine the role of the USD and the power of its network effects, including Eurodollars in global spreadsheet capitalism. See Pennings, A.J. (2025, Nov 30) The Seven Phases of Global US Dollar Transformation: Past and Future. apennings.com https://apennings.com/crisis-communications/the-seven-global-phases-of-past-and-future-us-dollar-transformations/
[3] Several prompts were used to gather and organize information under my SACT layers approach from Chat GPT. Hypertext links are used to connect to sources.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Not to be considered financial advice.
Anthony J. Pennings, PhD is a Professor at the Department of Technology and Society, State University of New York, Korea and a Research Professor for Stony Brook University. He teaches engineering economics, as well as AI and broadband policy. From 2002-2012, he taught digital economics and information systems management at New York University. He also taught in the Digital Media MBA at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas, where he lives when not in Korea.
Tags: Abstraction > COMEX futures > SACT > Silver > Substitution > Symbolic computing > Telecom Synchronization > XAG/USD
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Professor (full) at State University of New York (SUNY) Korea since 2016. Research Professor for Stony Brook University. Moved to Austin, Texas in August 2012 to join the Digital Media Management program at St. Edwards University. Spent the previous decade on the faculty at New York University teaching and researching information systems, digital economics, and global political economy
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- cultural Industries
- data analytics and meaning
- democratic political economies
- digital coordination
- digital destruction
- digital geography
- digital media economics
- digital media management
- digital monetarism
- digital spreadsheets
- disaster risk management
- disruption
- dystopian economies
- educational innovations
- electric money
- enabling frameworks
- enterprise systems
- financial news
- financial technology
- food policy and security
- futurists
- geopolitical risk
- global communications
- global e-commerce
- health IT
- how IT came to rule the world
- intellectual property
- journalism
- meaning makers
- meaningful play
- media strategies
- mobile technologies
- multimedia
- political economies in sf
- political economy of media
- public administration
- science and technology studies
- sensing technologies
- smart new deal
- social media
- space systems
- spreadsheet logic
- strategic communications
- sustainable development
- technologies of meaning
- technology management
- telecom policy and net neutrality
- telegraphic political economy
- telelearn/telework
- the cold war
- the smith effect
- uncategorized
- visual literacy and rhetoric
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