Corporate saving glut and liquidity holding

This chapter, starting from the relationship between hoarding and economic and financial crises analysed by Marx, provides an overview of phenomena such as corporate saving glut and corporate liquidity holding and their possible relevance in defining the nature of financial crises and the economic crises that follow them. It also outlines the increasing role that large NFCs play in determining both the amount of aggregate saving and its forms of utilisation in advanced countries. Furthermore, the chapter shows how the corporate saving glut and huge corporate liquidity holdings, which today seem to be a brainteaser for mainstream economics, had already been identified around the Great Depression of the 1930s and had only temporarily been countered during the Golden Age by the mode of regulation that emerged from the experience of the depression itself. Finally, the possible role played by the corporate saving glut and corporate liquidity holding in accounting for the financial crisis of 2007–2008 is discussed.