Temporal Markets: Money, the Future and Political Action

Following Keynes and Shackle, money can be defined by its temporal nature, as a tool for managing and using the uncertainty of the future – as a problem and as an opportunity. Finance, which relies on money, can be described as a large apparatus that relates to the future while operating in the present, or the present intervention in the construction and structuring of the future. The financial crisis, in this context, can be brought into connection with an inadequate management of the future in terms of risks and its actual conceptualisation. The reference to time also allows one to interpret the approach and the effectiveness of public policies on finance This paper examines the measures of Quantitative Easing, describing it as “injection” of time into markets, in the hope of encouraging the use and construction of the future.