18 
easily think of examples in Britain or Germany ) derive 
a great part of th eir profits from financial and real 
estate business.Financial investment has played an increasing 
role in comparison with real investment. More recently the 
monetarist policy of Britain and the U.S. Has reinforced 
the tendency of industrial firms to Convert themselves 
into rentiers and speculators. 
These structural changes in the organisation of business 
are capable of explainign a weakening of the incentive 
to invest. Maturity, in this perspective, has taken on 
a new shape in so far as it has taken hold of the internal 
organisation of the concerns and the character and strategy 
of their managers. 
While the dege neration described has been proceeding 
gradually through the years, the change in economic climate 
which took place within a few years has been precipitated 
by a number of events. 
The most important has been the breakdown of econcomic 
international cooperation. The first clear signal of this 
occured when the U.S. went off gold, and two years later 
the exchange rates were given free rein. This created 
expectation or fear of inflation and led to violent speculation 
in gold and commodities ( Kaldor^). This culminated finally 
in the first oil shock. To a very large extent the world 
inflation was the consequence of this disarray. 
I 
The exchange rates have been chaotic since, dominatedjby 
capital movements rather than price or cost relations. 
The fact that there was in all those years not a single