 Well, it's an enormous pleasure for me to be here and I particularly like also speaking to audiences where you have legal scholars because that is forever an engagement in the kind of work that I do and forever the need to discover how far does my argument go if I factor in notions of law which inevitably contain delimitations not limitations the delimiting of an argument so I also really look forward to your questions to your comments because I learned that way I'm by now a nice old little professor who keeps discovering I'm so happy that I'm still living because there are so many things that are changing you know it's like a little revolution continuously and as I travel around the world believe me there are many unsettlements that are taking place in many parts of the world so let me while you're ready look all of that and and what I want to talk about is precisely that the rise of extractive logics we tend to think of the extractive as in mining you extract once you extract the characteristic of an extractive logic in my in my reading is that once you extract you don't care what happens in the site where you have extracted it's an absolute effect whereas in other fields you want wherever you take something from to grow and to expand because you will need more of it and when you when you think of I'm particularly also thinking about extractive logics in our economy it in high finance is really algorithmic math you know it has nothing to do with traditional economics and it really functions as an extractive sector and I will be talking a bit about that so it is a very radical and extreme component of our current reality that I want to talk about with you and I repeat it is very extreme but it's happening and in a way it is spreading and some of the research I've been doing most most recently again confirms that this now has to do with the buying up by major financial firms of modest housing complexes not just little houses housing complexes all across the world not in China they haven't gotten into China yet these are mostly Western entities so when I talk about the rise of extractive logics I'm talking about something that is very real that is happening even though it is still confined only to certain settings you know it's not happening everywhere I'm sure it's not happening here in your town so who knows we have been surprised you know we have a whole team doing research across the world now let me start with this notion that we make sounds good they're good things that we made but we also made this the RLC you recognize it in 20 years we managed to destroy one of the largest internal seas that we have you'll have to stand back and say wow it's an accomplishment of sorts we did that we also did this you know these capabilities the questions that this raises in my mind is if we could do this what else could we do that is profoundly transformative so over hovering over the negatives for me is also the notion of recovering a capability that now is a negative how do we make it into a positive now this is something I just brought that in because I thought maybe some of you would would see the point here but this notion of key codes and the capacity to aggregate the capacity to jump up how we can with existing capabilities not just take it in the negative vector but also take it in a positive vector so I'm doing this with my son who is a crazy artist unlike his mother who is not crazy that's me by the way the mother because you know it's really interesting to see how artists are dealing with some of these issues let me start with raising a question to get at the the properties the particularities of our current epoch I don't know if I can do you hear me this way or do I need the mic I maybe need the mic so what is the steam engine of our epoch if you want that which can make a new ordering without changing everything because that is one of the crucial modalities of course of transformations that which shapes what is in and what is out and we have had such I argue that today it's high finance and high finance has nothing to do with economics I think this is a crucial issue and maybe there are some of you legal scholars who will disagree with me and let's have a discussion let me use as an example this this is a fairly known element and it's just one little element this is credit default swaps outstanding 1919 billion into a one sixty two trillion just a few years later question invitation think of anything that has this capacity of growth and this which I describe is only 10% of the value in play of finance so just how I'm not I lose the plot oh you know what this is it attached to moving here yeah okay it's okay now this is another element that I want to put on the table and then I'll return in a more generic way to some of these capabilities footnote we tend to think of the term capability as a positive capability sounds positive but of course there are capabilities that are very dangerous there are negatives that are marked by extractive logics so here but now returning to this so dark pools in finance I'm just I don't know how many of you heard about this but it's a growing condition in high finance in the financial world and see here we have Europe and the United States as you can see you know a bunch of these dark pools the term dark pools is not my term it's a term of the head of the central bank at a given moment in time about ten years ago when this sort of begins to get going now United States very number one likes being number one and Europe number two there are other countries that are also engaging this I don't know how many of you I repeat heard of dark pools in finance but they are private networks owned by private firms that are today the main instrumentalities in the world of high finance it's not the the the publicly known and recognized like the central bank or the whatever other institutions it's private networks number two there are very long lists of firms are talking business firms waiting to be accepted in one of these private pools number three and these are the words by the head of the central bank we do not know what happens in these dark pools and he coined the term dark pools for them so what we see we the citizens we see the stock market moment when it comes to high finance and a lot of this stuff will also have a moment in the stock market stock market is a public entity in principle anybody has access to it I mean you have to go through a few parameters so to say radically different from these dark pools in finance I mentioned this to just emphasize a capability a capability that is really quite extraordinary quite private we know very little the head of the central bank also knows very little and there are long waiting lists of entities the owners of these black dark pools are private actors as you can see it's also entered in Europe and I would love to know if there is somebody here who is working on what's happening in Europe because it's not so easy to get the data let's put it that way why am I having oh yeah right okay we discovered that that's ah it doesn't work either there we go so so finance as capability in both direct and indirect pathways so here I want to just give you a few examples this is what became a crisis in the United States it was considered a crisis generated and this is very important by fairly low income people who and I quote thought they could afford to buy a house put whatever money they had signed whatever contracts got a house and five or ten years later they all went bankrupt 14 million house 40 point 14.5 million households went bankrupt that's a very large number certainly if you think of a country like the Netherlands that would mean that we were like almost all country is bankrupt 14.5 million households could be you know you multiply the fact of all the people involved in a given household etc it affected a lot of people in a big country like the United States in a country like the United States which is still living a bit sometimes in the Wild West it doesn't need to know what all is happening all over it many people never found out that this happened now I want you to think what does it mean to expel 14 million households from their home because that's what happened basically I mean it took years we're talking a period of about nine years but it's a vast number of people and it was invisible every household could have been ten people five people three people we don't have a visual on it because that's another modality you can engage in massive operations that never reveal that they're massive because you know it happens over years it happens in many different districts it happens so many people never really in the United States never really found out that you had this little history going on and here are just some of the figures for closures for those I mean you are some of you at least you know are familiar with these guys and so this is also includes repetitions have because it's not just single but we are talking millions and that's another thing what is it about our current systematicity that a huge number can sort of navigate the situation as if it never happened many people in the United States never found out that this happened that all these people were expelled from their homes in 14 million households again it could be 20 million people 30 million people okay now here is something something else that is also connected well this is the this is Europe in Europe but we they have stopped counting I've been trying it if any of you knows after 209 it's very difficult to get access to these figures but Europe went through something similar on a much lower scale and so here are some of those figures and as you see you know and and this is European countries with either highest or lowest number of foreclosures and I don't know why we can't get data after 209 but I would really like to know if there is anybody who knows why but again it gives you sort of a sense and and really the list goes on and on I just don't have it now you understand the language of foreclosures right I know it's an English term but other element I'm just putting elements here on the table ratio of household credit to personal disposable income right so you okay now I want to point out so we all know that in 2000 the figure the dates here matter 2000 to 2005 2000 is when Eastern Europe especially I'm especially focusing here on Eastern Europe when Eastern Europe sort of you know enters basically the Western style economic system and certainly in finance and loans and all of that whether modest so I just want to so let's just go to this title ratio of household credit to personal disposable income credit credit is a very special word credit suggests that you have it you can spend it it's a bit yours well and listen to what happens check Republic ratio of household credit to personal disposable credit is dead by the way right it is dead for the household it's credit for is peculiar language so on this is not my language in other words I'm sort of also engaging in a critique a bit of this language but so here check Republic 2008.5 by 205 and these years are crucial here 27% are Hungary 11% household credit debt 39% so yeah so it just goes on now at the same time the United States was already way off the charts look at this 104 105 Germany on their hand admirable stability and 70 is very reasonable 70 70 70 70 70 is my name and so you look at these different countries you know I mean most of these countries down here have been rather reasonable now when I see these type of data and this is just one microcosm but it is a microcosm that is why there are mostly a certain type of country I immediately have a few questions and so I'm having a bit of trouble here there you go and so I want to know who owns that debt that you know those contracts that modest households bought in this case in Eastern Europe etc. Now here we see share of foreign currency denominated household credit and to a 5% household etc. So Hungary, Romania etc. are some of the countries where you had a lot of this debt functioning right and oh you know what I have a slight missing here I'm really sorry well let me I'll elaborate on it so these columns that you see here indicate foreign ownership of this household debt Germany owns a lot of this debt you know there are a few countries that own a lot of this debt all the Germanic countries in this particular group that I was looking at in Eastern Europe Germany Austria and Switzerland owned that debt of those modest households are in those other countries that to me is significant because you know if the local bank in your neighborhood owns your debt that is something totally different you know that's a little neighborhood effect and you pay your interest rates then the bank you know etc etc can develop more business and whatever you can imagine all the nice local bank these modest households became part of a grabbing operation is to put it a bit brutally but it was in a way a grabbing operation that is happening right now in many parts of the world including in in Asia etc not in China China totally different where you have using the use of modest localized households where international banks move in and take out they and if you have a million of those even if they're low payments it accumulates but on top of that there is an extractive mode it's not like your local bank that wants to enable you and wants to enable your sons and daughters know this is extractive and now it's in the housing question I've I recommend to all of you who might be interested to film called push not a good title but anyhow push tracks one of the major corporations that we think of as a financial firm based in the United States which in many parts of the world including in Asia is buying up huge housing complexes for poor people for modest income people and redoing that now they're making money of this and the result of doing all that upgrading is a doubling of rents you know the story right and so those the poor the lower income people who used to live there are out this is something now I don't want to mention the the corporation that is doing this this is just one we are tracking and now we have all the documentation etc it will enter the public domain pretty soon parts of it already half so this is one huge firm a global firm that does high finance and they're doing this this is this the this is you know buying up all these modest for all these big buildings with modest properties this is new this has a bit of it has always happened but on this scale that you have major financial firms buying up housing modest housing complexes all over is new and and it raises a whole bunch of questions that I don't want to dwell on now but that are worthwhile sort of thinking about in short extractive sectors an extractive sector is a particular type of sector can extract even from modest households so there was a time when a modest household was a modest household was a modest household today you actually need to check it out that very modest household is actually likely to be part of a huge field of materialities that the financial system has generated is interested in and has then generated and with algorithmic mathematics as I already said you transform a million little houses into something that is no longer we see the house the building by algorithmic mathematics you have a field of material assets and that is what the high-income investment sector wants they do not want derivatives derivatives are for you and me they're out for the high it used to be you know derivatives have been around for a long time they were a successful now what they want is asset-backed securities how do you generate asset-backed securities you need some materialities in there all those the acquisitions of all those very modest houses we're talking millions now has to do not with the little house it has to do with asset-backed securities so you have a real asset I don't know if you're following what I'm saying but this is pretty disastrous if a modest building can be transformed in something that can produce high value as an asset as an asset-backed security not good not good now here's another extractive mode so I think of these all as logics that are centered in extraction in not generating not building not taking a risk in extracting this is something that I'm assuming some of you have heard about which is really a very significant buying of fancy buildings in major cities the full list is a hundred hundred cities in the world which are sort of the top you know the liverers if you want or objects of desire and so this is just one year it happens to be a very significant year because it is when it first really takes off and the figures so that we're talking 2013 to 2014 a sort of a year now what you're seeing here is first in New York in the metro just in one year 55 trillion bought in-house in-house billions and that represent ten per nine ten per ten point nine percent is growth over the prior year London 47 Tokyo and then it goes on so you have a hundred now you have Hong Kong this minus does not mean that this is a minus this is a positive but compared to the prior year of acquisitions this is lower now I am working with a hundred and it is quite interesting I don't know if I'm if I'm communicating what this is about but this is about just buying property of all sorts and I will develop what comes next right but it is buying buying buying and this is just looking at foreign buyers foreign investors here at London is the queen of the domain and then New York there is much less so but again the list you know and again the list of the hundred is quite interesting now I must tell you that in London now just as an example London is an extreme all sort the the Katari Royals own more of central London than the Queen of England which I sort of find sympathetic almost you know what I mean sort of how neat she really good number two you can't see that it's not like the buildings are telling us now we belong to the Katari Royals so again how we are losing traction in terms of what the material world tells us because I think there were earlier times when the material world really told us a lot I think we're moving into a time when between algorithmic mathematics and I don't know what all the certain elements of our current internationalism like anybody can buy anywhere we are losing the material is losing the capacity if you want to tell us what is actually going on okay the total value of these types of acquisitions which is a limited number you understand it's a minority of buildings anywhere in the in the 100 top cities by acquisition this is just acquisitions of existing buildings not new construction that is all so you have mid 2014 to mid 2015 it was 600 billion mid 2015 to mid 2016 over a trillion so there's a lot of money in play sort of circulating as if it doesn't know what to do with itself by these housing some are empty some are not many are empty though I want to emphasize that I'll come back to that point okay yes so the top 100 cities by property investment in 2016 account for 10% of the world's population 30% of the world's GDP 76% of property investment now I put this these are not my figures and I put this in this type of separate modality because I think it's investment that's a language that they are using I think it's something else an investment we associate with certain types of product productive modes something this is different one result by the way our empty buildings in Manhattan London Paris we have a lot of empty buildings I alluded to it earlier already and people think ooh poor investors something went wrong and the question is did something go wrong or is an empty building actually better than an occupied it's a real question I'll come back to it too so here just a collective figures worldwide real estate assets these are figures that come from savels and savels is really everywhere in the world it's a it's a it's a money-making corporation it's not a research operation so I was in Pnom Penh trying to get some data having a hard time savels they had the data I needed I was a bit in shock because I you know it's not my mode to work with the with commercial operations but anyhow world but real estate assets comprise nearly 60% of the value of all global assets that's an impressive number and that takes a lot of people by surprise including equities bonds and gold so this is sort of a total figure of all these buildings that are in play if you want again the figures come from savels now one one question that I as a social scientist as a theorist and ask what do I see what do my eyes tell me about that reality in the making so one way of putting it is what does this all look like this is civilized London central London here is the Timbs and here are these buildings mostly they're old buildings so a journalist a German journalist they're always so serious the German journalist said after we had talked he said let's go to the place which you're talking about and I don't usually do that by the way you know I just sit there do the and so I found myself in this very touristic area in central London there is no and and I heard the tourists it's top full of tourists that's why I never go there I don't know I'm a tourist across myself too but I'm mad and so I heard them say look at these beautiful British buildings these are all owned and they are beautiful British buildings I think that's an ugly but anyhow most of them are very beautiful they're all owned by one Chinese company now I don't hold this against the Chinese by the way I want to emphasize that very very clearly I just find it interesting and it's an invitation to think what am I actually seeing what what see and and I'm dealing both with something quite abstract which is what is the capacity of the material today in today's world to have speech there was a time I think when the material had quite a bit of speech I'm not so sure today and this is one of those examples that you see all these nice British looking things and none of them is owned by a Brit so so you know there is something to me very interesting about that besides the fact cities on the ground you know at ground level which is the business is involved and all of that totally different just on pass on London property purchased by overseas companies all of these companies I have the full list are abroad none of them has a name that we recognize they all have you know there's a certain kind of formula that gets used for some of these firms now that's a lot of buying I don't know if you can see that that's just a larger London area this is something that is repeating itself I am tracking this in many different parts of the world I am not sure where it all goes I think that there are different utility functions involved so different projects if you want but there it is and it's probably growing as we speak okay baby come on now this is another thing that you see in Manhattan and you see it in London and you also see it a bit in Paris or more difficult to establish the New York has had a mode of building as you can see that sort of stands out if you go to Paris you rarely would see the Queen standing out there like that I mean the Queens at the buildings I don't mean any real Queen and so you see in Manhattan Manhattan is a little bit of land it's not huge you know Manhattan is not big you see these towers that are actually mostly empty and by now these are all dark why am I having such trouble that so 57% of condos are owned by shell companies you know this is a familiar bit I'm just going to show one more right and this is the Plaza these are all very fancy buildings and the point I'm I want to make here is that gradually less and less people are living there because they don't like living there because it's empty and in fact the buildings now they want them all out because the building can function as a physical element that can feed a different type of instrument having people is a bother having people is a drag having people means that you have to pay for this and for that leave the building empty it's the best business deal that is a bit alarming and now I told you we just did this huge project tracking across many countries in the world there is a film is out it's an amazing film called a repeat push that name but anyhow how much of this is happening in different parts of the world that they're buying up the buildings and leaving them empty and an empty building can produce more better types of income than an occupied building why because it's not the building it's what I started out with by algorithmic math you have a pile of assets doesn't matter what is the toilet the wall doesn't matter it's not a visual thing and there you build asset backed securities which is what the high income sector wants they don't want derivatives I repeat myself derivatives are for you and me they're tired they don't deliver much they have been overused so I am that good for us the high investment circuit asset backed securities that is what they want how do you produce an asset backed security you need a lot of materialities to produce the asset part of it and then you bring in you know all the other instrumentalities that make it a financial instrument you know all right so one I don't quite end here though this was also meant as an ending you know when I ask myself as I go around the world and believe me most countries and most continents are not like this continent here what are the formats of the future when it comes to this kind of stuff you know of the how people will live how what is the meaning of cities etc and thinking of our larger world where most people are poor and are getting expelled from their land because this is a thing that is happening so with those kinds of elements I spoke a bit in shorthand but I'm sure you could follow so this is one juxtaposition by the way there is no part in the world where you can stand and see this I just want to alert you to that because I very often get questions can you tell me where that was both are real though the one up there is a mix this is real but it's not like there is a place where you can stand and then also see that other but this is the juxtaposition that in many ways captures the future in most parts of the world except mean Europe is really different there and the United States a bit the Americas because it's so huge you know but this is you know this very dense not fully regulated but not criminal either you know the the this side of throne and then the towers and if there is no land we're building on water now we might ask why does all of this matter you know so what you could just say so there they do it that way they're here there are a few crooks involved in the whole thing but but for me the city is a critical space for those without power in today's world where most land we may look at a map and say oh but there's so much empty land it's all owned there are 30 governments that have been buying land all over outside their own land and there are over 150 corporations that for a whole variety of reasons and all kinds of different economic sectors have been buying land there is almost no open land there is a bit you know in certain parts of Africa and certain parts of Asia but basically we're out of land as we are also out of sand for building you have heard that part right I love adding that I just thought about it it has nothing to do with my lecture here but you know so so the city so why does the city matter the city as a space where those without power get to make a history and I think that that is very important and when you look at I repeat what I started at destroyed you know over the centuries what has survived remember that cities have outlived very powerful actors governments kings queens you name it the city is still there after all these regimes are gone and what has especially survived are the neighborhoods of the poor which in a way were untouchables in one version or another in Europe we didn't call it untouchables but they were basically and the the big palaces or the big you know public monuments and all of that what has gone are the areas of the middle classes the broad middle classes so but this notion that the neighborhoods of the poor and the sort of the central part of the representational side of the city has outlived across centuries all kinds of forms of power kings queens you know whatever is to me also an interesting datum secondly the capacity of urban space and I'm thinking especially now of big cities cities that are a bit messy that cannot be fully controlled so in the US we have a few of those but around the world we have a lot of those so the capacity of the city to make us all whether rich or poor into urban subjects even if only for a moment of the day now I think in here in your beautiful city though I haven't quite gotten to know it clearly but I've got to know very nice parts of it but maybe this all you know is sort of I think the Netherlands is special Europe is very special Europe is different really from most of the areas that I am talking about so I just want to make it and have this notion that everybody like in the subway in New York where you have I wouldn't say the super rich but many very high-income people you just take the subway because the only way to get quickly to your home or whatever it might be and the poor and the homeless and those who haven't been able to wash themselves for a month all of it is together in our subways our subways are also falling apart I don't know if anybody has recently been there it's a scandal huh public domain doesn't get any money but anyhow there are moments in the city where this is possible this absolute intersection of all subjects and this matters one instrument in supporting the notion of a civic subject you know is that that there are moments and there are conditionalities that make us all into urban subjects sort of the notion of a civic subject beyond wealth and beyond poverty and not to do with poverty the city and and so another language that I like to use I've written all all text about this the notion of the city as a hacker a hacker you know what I mean by that that you unsettle hacking is unsettling that you unsettle the basic meaning the traditional meaning and a city is an extraordinary place not a tiny totally controlled city but a big city that cannot be fully managed you know where you are really it sort of hacks subjects that think themselves all powerful and it hacks the poor because the poor suddenly have also a kind of presence huh this is a bit romantic I admit it doesn't work with with legal scholars but and so this is on like the typical trends for the post-World War two patterns because then you had a after World War two there is a lot of quite civilized building and and sort of a sense of the civic and you know it's a very interesting period actually after World War two that happens certainly in the West and and now I feel that after 1988 for me 1980s is the break when we globalized deregulate and privatize a lot in many countries extreme case is of course the the the Americas but Europe also begins to do that then you enter a different period and so I think one way of marking that difference is this very they have always existed logics of extraction have always existed that we really see an ascendance of logics of extraction so traditional banking coming back to that initial example traditional banking is commerce it sells something for a price money well we all need it we can get better whatever a better education better I don't know what but when you extract that's it there is no it's up and that's what high finances it's extractive so a lot of the stuff that I've been talking to you about actually is very much linked to extractive whereas we tend to think of housing the housing question as something we all need it a city needs it you know there are deep histories around the question of housing and I I really think this is a change again I urge you to see this film called push which looks at what I have been describing here on pass on a bit in in many different countries including countries in Asia where the housing question is no longer the housing question it's a different question it's really a different now very quickly I I just wanted to show these this is a particularly crucial moment these are just big trends I'm sure that many of you are already familiar with it but I just wanted to put that also on the map this is one way of capturing a lot of what I talked about these these these are the logics in play corporate profits corporate profits have long existed here is the difference look what happens here goes up the crisis famous crisis to await 2010 it lasted about three minutes for them and then higher than before for most of the people in the US it was a crisis I don't know if everywhere but in many parts right and this is even better corporate assets the crisis is that little little wrinkle there you see that where it sort of goes down a bit it goes up so we have two worlds in our big cities we have two worlds one that really can have a crisis in the other one that can feed off a crisis which is a rather different proposition this I don't know if people can understand the graph but anyhow it's 1917 to two or five but it really goes on I'm sorry it's kind of cut off there income share of 10% top earners so you have a high eye there you know and then it becomes this nice lower level curve for the majority are middle-class households that are doing very nicely etc and 1987 1999 it goes up again in other words concentration of wealth and of advantage right so we have this period in our West now this is the United States United States always a bit extreme but this is the same curve you see in many of our countries certainly in the UK and in Argentina and and well you have a period here is you know this is like after World War two you have several decades where you really have a sense of the growth of middle-class more opportunities and blah blah blah and many people still think that this is now no that really begins to change in the 1980s and you have again a concentration rather than this sort of more distributed notion I don't know if this graph I'm hoping that it that it is clear I want to end with something that I like to think of as unstable meanings a lot of what I've been talking about is marked by a certain kind of instability of meaning now legal scholars are very good at detecting where is the stability of a concept of us so I like sort of this notion of an unstable meaning now given all of these negatives we have no growing rapidly you can all read that etc this is the question who are we the citizens in this setting you know there's enough negative and the United States is certainly an extreme case so I wanted to show you this map and this map is in the public domain how many of you have seen this any I see somebody there you have seen it oh no you were maybe saying hello okay in the United States almost nobody has seen this map this is astounding actually and people often think that I'm showing something that is secret you know these are your other numbers all buildings that are tracking all of us if you were there for two days or have a day you're in that system if my old grandma went to have a cup of coffee in the village in New York she's in there we're all in there the entities are a vast number of institutions that are gathering data on all of us gathering data gathering data huge buildings are being built also in the middle of the country to house all the information now and it's in the public domain because the Washington Post with enormous courage and they have to pay a big fine because they were said we're going to put it and you find it in the Washington Post 2010 here's the information it has a lot of data I'm just showing you this one map to me it is very important to realize how few people in the United States know that there is this capacity to track all of us there is an ironic point that I make that not everybody agrees with me they have gathered so much data that when they really could use it they can't they get lost you realize I mean all those buildings are continuously gathering data so you know it's like the curve yeah good good good good and then you have so much forget it so they often what happens is they track the person in the field you know on the street or and then they try to find more information in this enormous collection of data all electronic no gathering and I you know they don't tell us really very much I don't know but it doesn't always work now if I may I'm just going to run through this so I'm thanking Jody Hvergen and Snowden you know snow right so this is what we know and I emphasize what we know which is very limited but this we know that the NSA the National Security Agency can do so far because by now you know who knows where they are so when you read it goes on and on and on and on and some of it is so ridiculous which is a really like I don't know if I can see one of them here but I can spy it can spy on you as law firms representing foreign countries and trade negotiations okay that is sort of a meaningful thing but I want there is another one that they have here that tells you I mean some of the stuff is just so preposterous it's like a system that has gone out of control like they can they can they can enter for instance the United Nations discussions you know which I close doors but my god if it's top secret you know it's any up so I just want to end with this now in Europe you know you also have this right started in 2015 right and it breaches recent European Court of Justice you know you know more about this than I do and that's it thank you very much