There are numerous reports from NGOs about the social impact of the credit card system and some reports from European Parliament detailing the use of financial systems for US surveillance, most recently around the fiasco resulting in SWIFT2 (aka SWIFT1 with a different name and more servers). A key recent instance of the political use of financial systems is the blocking of Iran from SWIFT, well documented to have been campaigned by Israel via the US defence establishment. They eventually convinced Europe to sign off on it too... amusingly India just said "we'll stop using cash for oil and ship them gold instead". Also http://www.scribd.com/doc/215642587/Finance-and-the-Future-B... (my talk from HAR2009)
