Hidden empire of finance: how Wall Street profits from our cities and fuels global inequality

In this talk about his recent book Hidden Empire of Finance (Duke, 2026), Michael Goldman examines the large-scale flows of capital into national economies as speculative investment in the growing urban real estate market. In doing so, the talk will show that speculative urbanism relies on dispossession and the racialization of institutional practices to fuel finance's insatiable appetite for capital, determining the ways cities across the global South and North are governed.

Meet our speakers and chair

Michael Goldman is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for Global Studies at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. He is the author of Imperial Nature and the co-editor of The Social Lives of Land and Chronicles of a Global City, among others.

Hyun Bang Shin is Professor of Geography and Urban Studies and Head of the Department of Geography and Environment at LSE.

More about this event

The Department of Geography and Environment is a centre of international academic excellence in economic, urban and development geography, environmental social science and climate change.

If you have a query, please contact us at geog.comms@lse.ac.uk.

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