Petrodollars, Shock Therapy, and the Emergence of Global Spreadsheet Logic
The 1980s debt crisis was therefore not simply the failure of development economics. It was the birth of global spreadsheet capitalism, a system whose logic continues to structure the world economy today, and whose next phase may culminate in AI-mediated planetary monetary coordination.
From Gold to Grid and the “Information Standard” to the SACT-AI Engine
The blog post explores the transition of the global monetary order from the physical gold standard of Bretton Woods to Walter Wriston’s “Information Standard,” and finally to the proposed SACT-AI (Substitution, Abstraction, Computing, and Telecommunications) framework. It argues that money has transitioned into “Spreadsheet Capitalism,” where national economies are managed and disciplined by digital grids.
The Two Santa Claus Theory of US Economic Growth and the Prospects of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)
Intentional deficit spending is not strictly a Democratic agenda. Republicans pushed related ideas with the Two Santa Claus Theory: deficit spending and tax cuts for the rich. Written in March 1976, by Wall Street Journal editorial writer, Jude Wanniski stressed that for economy to be healthy, US politics should have a division of labor between Democrats and Republicans.
Reviewing Castells’ Global Automaton
In my long-term quest to find some answers as to what constitutes the techno-informational framework of the global financial system, I ran across Manuel Castells’ description of the “Automaton” a number of years ago. He wrote a chapter called “Information Technology and Global Capitalism” in Global Capitalism (2000) where he made some linkages between the […]
The Surveilling Eye of Global Financial News
Surveillance of the world is considered an important function of media systems and plays a unique role in the financial industry. Furthermore, it is important to place the analysis of financial news within the political context of a larger techno-structural environment of global financial trading that works to discipline countries, companies and people around the world. The implications of this global web have been amplified by the extraordinary volume and velocity of the system that sees tens of trillions of dollars of trades transacted every day.
Geopolitical Risk and the Information Standard
Like the traditional Gold Standard, the Information Standard is no panacea for the management of the global economy. Both impose restrictions on national political structures and policy decision-making.
How IT Came to Rule the World-The Information Standard and Other Sovereignties
This global information standard became a sovereign power in its own right. Nation-states and organizations were caught up in the opportunities and consequences of the new financial trading system that began to structure modern life along the dictates of a new techno-economic imperative.
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About Me
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
You can reach me at:
anthony.pennings@gmail.com
apennings70@gmail.com
anthony.pennings@sunykorea.ac.kr
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