To what extent does the reign of the QAA reflect global Capital and not what Weber would call a bureaucracy? The notions of quality and excellence have always been voided of form, reflecting only Capital.

It is a question of time. Money is able to cross the spaces between nationalities. As such, it functions outside the boundaries of the nation state. When the Bank of England was created through nationalisation, it became a source of credit. Its authority was unquestioned; it needn't default on loans since it could always raise money through taxation or war. But it acted as a guarantor for an economy that would henceforward delimit the role of a national economy. The flows of money are international. A succession of deregulations has removed any obstacle to those flows. Money is now sought for its own sake, not for the goods and services it can provide.

Time, too, is captured. Money enables transactions between spatially separated cities; credit enables transactions between temporally separated moments. One day you'll have to pay me back, but not yet. You can buy what you want to right now, but you'll have to pay me back. You can do this either by the surplus value extracted from future production or from the profits you make through speculation. You are mortgaged insofar as your relation to the future is determined by a relation of credit. You are pledged to the death and pledge others to death insofar as you must pay me back with money and not with goods and services. Someone else will have had to borrow money to pay you, and so on.

A student contracts debt in order to study. She will end up owing a great deal, but she will have gained skills sufficient to allow to pay back her debts. In this sense, it may seem credit is wholly positve; a prosperous future is secured on the basis of a debt. The university also contracts debt, and once again, this seems postive, securing a much needed supply of goods and services.