The way we were: command-and-control centres in the global space-economy on the eve of the 2008 geo-economic transition

This is a short note to take stock of where we were before the financial crisis began to seriously undermine the global economy in late 2008. For once the phrase ‘to turn the world upside down’ could hardly be more merited: the most right-wing US President in living memory is accused by members of Congress in his own party of being a ‘Bolshevik’ pursuing ‘financial socialism’ while in the UK the ‘New Labour’ government is being praised for nationalising more of the British economy than the most socialist, post-1945 Labour government ever did. Instead of the diminution of the state, the era of neoliberal globalization appears to have culminated in a reassertion of state economic power: place-based public finance has come to the rescue of flow-based private finance.