And, fundamentally (libertarian fantasies aside), finance utterly depends on governments to regulate financial behaviour: that is, finance cannot operate reliably (at least not on any scale) except where a state provides securities commissions, legal mechanisms to make sure counterparties pay their debts, and forms of government intervention that mitigate utter monopolies, insider trading, cartelization and financial bubbles (Henwood 1998, 90–99). So finance relies fundamentally on state-mediated forms of resistance to its own power.

Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, loc. 504