We are pleased to invite you to the last lecture of the American Studies Colloquium Series in the 2025/26 Spring semester!
Mareike Beck
(University of Warwick)
“Extroverted Financialization: Banking on USD Debt”
Thursday, May 28, 2026
at 4:45 p.m.
You can get 3 OZN points for participating in this event.
Where?
Dobra 55, room 2.118
(the building features some mobility accommodations: ramp and lift)
What?
This book 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.
Who?
Mareike Beck is Associate Professor in International Political Economy at the University of Warwick. Her work addresses the drivers and impacts of financialisation. More specifically, she uses historicist and feminist methodologies to explore role of global banking, USD hegemony and household inequalities within political economy.
