André Lara Resende published in the March edition of Revista Piauí the article titled "From public credit to democratic discredit: The recent explosion of financial wealth has demystified capitalist meritocracy."

The article examines the transformation of contemporary capitalism, with an emphasis on the growing predominance of the financial sector over the productive economy. The economist analyzes how the expansion of financial wealth, driven by the state, banks, and markets, often detached from the growth of goods and services production, affects income concentration, social trust, and perceptions of meritocracy, posing significant challenges to the economic and institutional stability of democracies.

From the 1980s onward, American capitalism underwent a profound transformation. It suffered a financial hypertrophy. It ceased to be industrial capitalism — the model that had prevailed from the nineteenth century through the first three quarters of the twentieth — and became an essentially financial capitalism. The increase in the value of financial claims relative to production and income, combined with the enormous liquidity of these claims in the markets, radically transformed the contemporary economy. This also affected American society, which until the end of the last century was composed predominantly of a middle class whose basic needs were fully met by the country’s economic model, who enjoyed a high standard of consumption, and who had many reasons to believe that life would continue to improve. That reality has now changed.

The article is available HERE.