In recent years the fringe finance industry became one of the largest growing industries globally. In the Baltic States among other sub-prime credit products, payday lending became synonymous with usurious lending practices which rapidly developed and spread in a space opened by various social shocks incurred during the financial crisis of 2008. In this work the rise and containment of fringe finance industry is analyzed through theoretical inquiries into recent wave of financialization and neoliberal capitalism with a closer look at the subordinated financialization regime prevalent in the Baltic States. The rise of consumer credit and fringe finance is supported by ambiguous policy prescriptions by supra-national organizations or national governments under the terms ‘Democratizations of Credit’ and ‘Financial Inclusion’. The ever-increasing reliance on credit by many people is not accidental and closely related to deep transformations in labour relations, retrenchment of welfare state and processes of precarization thus becoming integral part of financialization of everyday and contemporary forms of neoliberal subjectivation.
|
