[...] For Harvey, fictitious capital represents not a claim on actually existing value but a share of future surplus value yet to be extracted (2006, 265–268). But, for Harvey, finance does not exist purely as the realm of elite skulduggery, it is a crucial set of economic institutions by which capital “fixes” its inherent tendency towards overproduction and, as such is an essential, if crisis-prone, component of capitalist accumulation. In order for capital to expand, it requires mechanisms by which multiple otherwise competitive capitalists can pool their resources to undertake ventures that are too risky or too large for any single capitalist to undertake alone (270–273). As capitalists are not by their nature cooperative, a financial system becomes necessary which can put capital to work, rather than sitting in a vault in the money form. Colonial expeditions, railways, mines and certain forms of technological innovation are all examples of aspects of capitalism that require this sort of financialized collaboration between otherwise competitive capitalists. These necessitate a speculative market. However, one problem, as Marx noted, is that, for various reasons, it is easy for the financial sector to become more profitable than other sectors of capital, and it increasingly comes to dominate the economy as capitalists seek to invest in speculative returns based on the difference between the buying and selling prices of various securities (Harvey 2006, 316–324). But, since finance does not actually produce any “real” value itself, its increased power means a gradual widening of the gap between the price of financial assets, which might be said to escalate geometrically, and the actual underlying value of labour to which those assets lay claim, which might increase only arithmetically.