I've been working on constructing a world and timeline based on the relationship between government and markets, using historical reference of Church and state to try and imagine a future world of financially-centered city-states. What if the financial services, which comprise almost or just over half of the economies of most of the western world, become the dominant political force on the planet? How long before an obsession with the acquisition of futures, derivatives and options trumps the current desire to acquire equity and capital assets? The shadow banking system, the unregulated, borderless beast that amounts to over 70 times the world's GDP might become the new framework around which business and government operates.
