Analyses of global financial markets are dominated by atomized models of decision-making and behavioural psychology ('exuberance' or 'panic'). In contrast, this paper argues that overwhelmingly, finance organizations rather than 'individuals' make decisions, and routinely use emotions in formulating expectations. Keynes introduced emotion (business confidence and animal spirits) but in economics, emotion remains individualistic and irrational. Luhmann's system theory lies at the other extreme, where emotions like trust and confidence are central variables, functional in the reduction of complexity in sub-systems like the economy. The gap between irrational emotions aggregated to 'herd' behaviour in economics, and 'system trust' applied to finance and money as a 'medium of communication' in sociology, remains largely unfilled. This paper argues that while organizations cannot be said to 'think' or 'feel', they are rational and emotional, because impersonal trust, confidence and their contrary emotions are unavoidable in decision-making due to fundamental uncertainty. These future-oriented emotions are prevalent within and between organizations in the financial sector, primarily in generating expectations. The dynamic of corporate activities of tense and ruthless struggle is a more plausible level of analysis than either financial 'manias' in aggregate or 'system trust'.

This article explores how Anglo-American financial firms since the 1980s have operated and acted in an increasingly deregulated, risky, and uncertain arena. I look at these firms and their actions with a particular focus on "temporality" and requisite "emotion-rules," where variations in emotion-rules correspond with organizational definitions of uncertainty. Firms impose specific emotion-rules, depending on national policies, official duties, and interpretations of each risk. In finance, caveat emptor (i.e., buyer or lender distrust) is an emotion-rule set in screening policies and data collection for credit risks and risks of fraud by personnel, and it gives rise to actual emotions. I argue that three time-orientations are significant in creating emotion-rules. If a past, present, or a long-term future is deployed to construct a future, that creates and frames an institution's attempts to manage uncertainty. Looking exclusively at Anglo-American corporate finance policies and strategies (often deemed the international "one best way"), six modes of certainty constructions are presented. Each is assessed against the dispositions and emotional strategies required in highly-skilled careers, in specific organizational settings. The relative influence of individual perspectives, institutional rules and general typologies of social action is assessed and found to comprise one past view, three present views, and one future-oriented perspective towards the future. Implications are outlined for emotion-rules relevant to financial careers and office.

The advent of quantitative easing by the world’s major central banks invites renewed questions about the meaning and role of central bank independence in an age of economic crisis. This article draws together insights from economic sociology, history and democratic theory to engage in further discussion about the proper role of central banks in democratic society. We stress some related themes. Our brief history of central banks aims to show how these banks have always been embedded in economic and political coalitions and conflicts, therefore qualifying the term independence; our study also aims to show that in satisficing between conflicting tasks, central banks need to maintain a balance between cognitive competences and normative expectations. Independence is better understood as a form of dependence on the coalition of interests that supported the financial climate prevailing before the global crisis of 2008, one of low wage-price inflation, high borrowing and debt, and loss of prudential control. We argue that independence amounts to a form of re-privatisation of central banks, and that they are increasingly suborned to the pressures of financial markets. At the same time, asset price inflation has sacrificed growth and employment and therefore prolongs the crisis. The economic measures now demanded by the financial crisis prompt new doubts about the independent central bank experiment, potentially in favour of the ex ante model of governmental oversight of central banks.

The concept of impersonal trust in indirect social relationships is often treated as analogous to the personal trust of direct interpersonal relationships (whether "primary" or "secondary"). Studies in economic sociology of personal networks and overlapping trust relations among directors of major corporations, however, regard trust (or mistrust) as more exclusively a "property" of direct relationships. Personal trust relations, this study argues, are qualitatively differentfrom impersonal ones, such as global mediating organizations of trust that give institutional promises to guard investments againstfuture risk. They attempt tofulfill the claims of economic rationality in the face of the insuperable problem of temporality. Impersonal trust organizations include multinational accountancy firms and credit-rating agencies that provide allegedly reliable and objective ratings offirms and governments tofinancial speculators. Although a director of Moody's Investors Services argues (with reference to the 1997 East Asian "crisis ") that "markets are made up of atomised individuals, outside the controls of even the most vigilant governments, " this neglects the mediating trust organization itself, an "authority" that not only constantly tries to maintain its trustworthy appearance but one that unintentionally gives rise to increasing constraints and lack of agency. The implications of paying greater attention to impersonal trust in such global organizations are discussed.