Extroverted Financialisation
Banking on US Dollar Debt

Rewrites the history of the Americanisation of global finance by analysing the financialisation of German finance from the 1960s onwards.

Mareike Beck (Author)

9781009411813, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 21 August 2025

218 pages
23.5 x 16 x 1.8 cm, 0.48 kg

'Mareike Beck turns our understanding of German and European finance off its head and onto its feet. Everyone who seeks to understand the pre-history of 1990s' financial globalization and its crushing consequences today should read this finely-researched book. A stellar contribution to contemporary scholarship on the political economy of finance.' Daniel Mertens, Professor of International Political Economy, Osnabrück University

Extroverted Financialization offers a new account of the Americanization of global finance through the concept of 'extroverted financialization'. The study presents German banks as active participants of financialization, demonstrating how deeply entangled they were with global markets since post-WWII reconstruction. Extroverted Financialization locates the transformation of global banking within the revolution of funding practices in 1960s New York and shows how this empowered US banks to systematically outcompete their European counterparts. This uneven competition drove German banks to partially uproot themselves from their own home markets and transform their own banking models into US financial models. This transformation not only led to the German banks' speculative investments during the 2000s subprime mortgage bubble, but more importantly to rising USD dependency and their contemporary decline.

1. Introduction: The Puzzle of Contemporary Banking
2. Extroverted Financialisation: A Political Economy of Global Finance
3. The Pfandbrief: Securitisation Made in Germany
4. The Eurodollar Roots of the German Model
5. Grounding USDs
6. Liability Management and the Transformation of Deutsche Bank
7. Commerzbank: Attempting a Half-transformation
8. Financialised Banking and Its Discontents.

Subject Areas: Macroeconomics [KCB]