New Books in Finance

The secret insights of economics, translated for the rest of us. Should I buy or rent? Do I ask for a promotion? Should I tell people I'm pregnant? What salary do I deserve? Should I just quit this job? Common anxieties about life are often grounded in economics. In an increasingly win-lose society, these economic decisions—where to work, where to live, even how to live—have a way of feeling fixed and mistakes terminal. Daryl Fairweather is no stranger to these dynamics. As the first Black woman to receive an economics PhD from the famed University of Chicago, she saw firsthand how concepts of behavioral economics and game theory were deployed in the real world—and in her own life—to great effect.  Hate the Game: Economic Cheat Codes for Life, Love, and Work (U Chicago Press, 2025) combines Fairweather's elite knowledge of these principles with her singular voice in describing how they can be harnessed. Her great talent, unique among economists, is her ability to articulate economic trends in a way that is not just informative, but also accounts for life's other anxieties. In Hate the Game, Fairweather fixes her expertise and service on navigating the earliest economic inflection points of adult life: whether to go to college and for how long; partnering, having kids, both, or neither; getting, keeping, and changing jobs; and where to live and how to pay for it. She speaks in actionable terms about what the economy means for individual people, especially those who have the sneaking suspicion they're losing out. Set against her own experiences and enriched with lessons from history, science, and pop culture, Fairweather instructs readers on how to use game theory and behavioral science to map out options and choose directions while offering readers a sense of control and agency in an economy where those things are increasingly rare. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

John Kay's The Corporation in the 21st Century: Why (Almost) Everything We Are Told about Business Is Wrong (Yale UP, 2025) is an accessible and entertaining reappraisal of what business is for and how it works.  Full of history and written in a compelling narrative style, this book describes a shift in the underlying assumptions of the relationship between capital & labor. Kay describes how and why we have come to "love the product" as we also "hate the producer".  Kay discusses areas of particular change such as the relationship between business & finance, the concept of the "hollow" corporation, what we mean when we say "growth", and the motivations and standards of industry leaders.  Old ideas of owning the means of production are redundant as workers are increasingly the means of production. Capital is now often a disconnected service contracted from a specialized supplier, and businesses are run by professional managers whose main skill is exerting authority. Author recommended reading: Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt Hosted by Meghan Cochran Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with retired professor, consultant, Discovery Institute fellow, and a winner of the NTT DoCoMo Mobile Science Award, Jeffrey Lee Funk, about his recent book Unicorns, Hype, and Bubbles: A Guide to Spotting, Avoiding, and Exploiting Investment Bubbles in Tech (Harriman House, 2024). The book provides readers with fundamental tools for exploring technology markets and spotting financial bubbles, which have been recurring at a high rate in recent decades. In addition to talking through the basic perspectives the book provides, Vinsel and Funk also talk through examples of recent technology bubbles, including the likely current bubble centered on generative AI. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

The Library of Mistakes is a library located in Edinburgh, Scotland dedicated to financial and economic history. Russell Napier, the founder and keeper of the library is a professor at The Edinburgh Business School and investment manager. In this wide-ranging discussion, Russell discusses his work as a practitioner and a scholar of financial crises. He also discusses how and why he started a library, in addition to his writing on financial history. Professor Russell Napier is the author of The Solid Ground investment report for institutional investors and co-founder of the investment research portal ERIC- a business he now co-owns with D.C. Thomson. Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Critics on the Left have long attacked open markets and free trade agreements for exploiting the poor and undermining labor, while those on the Right complain that they unjustly penalize workers back home. In Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital (Harvard University Press, 2019), Kimberly Clausing takes on old and new skeptics in her compelling case that open economies are actually a force for good. Turning to the data to separate substance from spin, she shows how international trade makes countries richer, raises living standards, benefits consumers, and brings nations together. At a time when borders are closing and the safety of global supply chains is being thrown into question, she outlines a clear agenda to manage globalization more effectively, presenting strategies to equip workers for a modern economy and establish a better partnership between labor and the business community. Kimberly Clausing holds the Eric M. Zolt Chair in Tax Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law. During the first part of the Biden Administration, Clausing was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis in the US Department of the Treasury, serving as the lead economist in the Office of Tax Policy. Prior to coming to UCLA, Clausing was the Thormund A. Miller and Walter Mintz Professor of Economics at Reed College. Professor Clausing is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She has worked on economic policy research with the International Monetary Fund, the Hamilton Project, the Brookings Institution, the Tax Policy Center, and the Center for American Progress. She has testified before the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Committee on Finance, the Senate Committee on the Budget, and the Joint Economic Committee. Professor Clausing received her B.A. from Carleton College in 1991 and her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1996, both in economics. Other New Books Networks interviews on related themes include Yale economist Penny Goldberg, former Chief Economist of the World Bank, on The Unequal Effects of Globalization, Princeton economist Leah Boustan on how immigrants have contributed to and rapidly assimilated into US society, and University of Massachusetts economist Isabella Weber on China's process of integration into the world economy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

China's household debt has exploded from 11% of GDP in 2006 to over 62% today—a profound transformation in a traditionally savings-focused society. How is this reshaping social relationships and daily life? In this episode, Dr. Jiaqi Guo from the University of Turku reveals findings from her corpus analysis of China's largest debt support forum. Her research uncovers the practice of "contact bombing" (爆通讯录), where collectors harass debtors' entire social networks, causing what Chinese debtors call "social death" (社死). With minimal institutional protection, desperate debtors are forming underground support networks and developing their own legal expertise. This cultural shift exposes a human dimension of China's economic growth that statistics alone cannot capture. Dr. Jiaqi Guo is a University Lecturer in Chinese at the University of Turku, Finland. This episode is hosted by Hanna Holttinen, University Teacher in Chinese language at the University of Turku, Finland. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners: Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia), Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland), Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania), Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland) and Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden) and Norwegian Network for Asian Studies. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Class Meets Land: The Embodied History of Land Financialization (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Maria Kaika & Dr. Luca Ruggiero reveals something seemingly counterintuitive: that nineteenth-century class struggles over land are deeply implicated in the transition to twenty-first-century financial capitalism. Challenging our understanding of land financialization as a recent phenomenon propelled by high finance, Dr. Kaika and Dr. Ruggiero foreground 150 years of class struggle over land as a catalyst for assembling the global financial constellation. Narrating the close-knit histories of industrial land, industrial elites, and the working class, the authors offer a novel understanding of land financialization as a “lived” process: the outcome of a relentless, socially embodied historical unfolding, in which shifts in land's material, economic, and symbolic roles impact both local everyday lives and global capital flows. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

At the close of the 1970s, government treasuries and central banks took a vow of perpetual self-restraint. To this day, fiscal authorities fret over soaring public debt burdens, while central bankers wring their hands at the slightest sign of rising wages. As the brief reprieve of coronavirus spending made clear, no departure from government austerity will be tolerated without a corresponding act of penance. Yet we misunderstand the scope of neoliberal public finance if we assume austerity to be its sole setting. Beyond the zero-sum game of direct claims on state budgets lies a realm of indirect government spending that escapes the naked eye. Capital gains are multiply subsidized by a tax system that reserves its greatest rewards for financial asset holders. And for all its airs of haughty asceticism, the Federal Reserve has become adept at facilitating the inflation of asset values while ruthlessly suppressing wages. Neoliberalism is as extravagant as it is austere, and this paradox needs to be grasped if we are to challenge its core modus operandi. In Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance (Zone Books, 2024) Dr. Melinda Cooper examines the major schools of thought that have shaped neoliberal common sense around public finance. Focusing, in particular, on Virginia school public choice theory and supply-side economics, she shows how these currents produced distinct but ultimately complementary responses to the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. With its intellectual roots in the conservative Southern Democratic tradition, Virginia school public choice theory espoused an austere doctrine of budget balance. The supply-side movement, by contrast, advocated tax cuts without spending restraint and debt issuance without guilt, in an apparent repudiation of austerity. Yet, for all their differences, the two schools converged around the need to rein in the redistributive uses of public spending. Together, they drove a counterrevolution in public finance that deepened the divide between rich and poor and revived the fortunes of dynastic wealth. Far-reaching as the neoliberal counterrevolution has been, Dr. Cooper still identifies a counterfactual history of unrealized possibilities in the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. She concludes by inviting us to rethink the concept of revolution and raises the question: Is another politics of extravagance possible? This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

We are all stuck in a money cage. Money isn't the most important thing, but it is a thing and you can't get away from it. Birth costs money and death costs money. So even if you hate talking about money, you need to know the basics, the same way you need to know how to cook yourself a simple meal. The problem with most money books is that they are not written by practitioners and avoid hard truths. Paul Podolsky's The Uncomfortable Truth About Money: How to Live with Uncertainty and Learn to Think for Yourself (Harriman House, 2024) breaks down walls around financial knowledge. What a weathered investor knows is that stocks are not always good for the long run. They know that being stingy helps accrue wealth. They know the big thing when you buy property has nothing to do with the property. They know the big thing is less what happens to the markets in a day than if the entire system holds together. And they know what to look for if it's time to pull out. That's what this book will teach you: a lifetime of money learnings distilled to a thin volume, like a basic cooking recipe you can follow. Paul Podolsky writes about macro–politics and money. For many years, he was the strategist and equity partner at the largest hedge fund in the world. Previous to that, he worked as a reporter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

As Wall Street swooned and boomed through the last decade, our livelihoods have—now more than ever—come to rely upon the good sense and risk appetites of a few standout investors. And amidst the BlackRocks, Vanguards, and Berkshire Hathaways stands arguably the most iconoclastic of them all: SoftBank's Masayoshi Son. In Gambling Man: The Wild Ride of Japan's Masayoshi Son (Atria, 2024), the first Western biography of Son, the self-professed unicorn hunter, we go behind the scenes of the world's most monied halls of power in New York, Tokyo, Silicon Valley, Saudi Arabia, and beyond to see how Son's firm SoftBank has defied conventional wisdom and imposing odds to push global tech and commerce into the future. From the dizzying highs of Uber, DoorDash, and Slack to the epic lows of WeWork and tech-infused dogwalking app Wag Son and SoftBank have been at the center of cutting-edge capitalism's absolute peaks and valleys. In the process, Son, son of a pachinko kingpin who grew up in a slum in Japan, has been a hero, a villain, and even a meme-ified hero to the internet tech- and finance-bro set all at once. Based on in-depth research and eye-opening interviews, Gambling Man is an unforgettable character study and alarming true story of twenty-first-century commerce that will stick with you long after you turn the final page. Lionel Barber is the former editor of the Financial Times. As editor, he interviewed many of the world's leaders in business and politics, including US Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Barber has co-written several books and has lectured widely on foreign policy, transatlantic relations, and economics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

In this engaging interview, young scholar Dr, Joel Z. Garrod explains his book's main argument, with a personal touch. In Royal Histories: The Transformation of the Royal Bank of Canada, 1864-2022 (U Toronto Press, 2025), Garrod presents a historical analysis of the Royal Bank of Canada, illustrating how Canadian capitalism and the Canadian banking industry have transformed as they have consolidated nationally and expanded abroad. Emphasizing how national institutions and rules are increasingly becoming capabilities for transnational forms of capital accumulation, the book draws on extensive primary and secondary sources to document the transformation of the assemblage of territory, authority, and rights that have supported the bank's activities over time. Linking the bank's history to the policy regimes of the welfare state and neoliberalism, Garrod contends that our present period of globalization severely limits the extent to which nation-states can absorb capitalist crises or be a site of successful social reform. Connecting the Canadian experience to the wider transformation of global capitalism, Royal Histories illuminates the effects of globalization and the changing landscape of banking and finance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

The global financial crisis of the late 2000s was marked by the failure of regulators to rein in risk-taking by banks. And yet regulatory issues varied from country to country, with some national financial regulatory systems proving more effective than others.  In Visions of Financial Order: National Institutions and the Development of Banking Regulation (Princeton University Press, 2024), Dr. Kim Pernell traces the emergence of important national differences in financial regulation in the decades leading up to the crisis. To do so, she examines the cases of the United States, Canada, and Spain—three countries that subscribed to the same transnational regulatory framework (the Basel Capital Accord) but developed different regulatory policies in areas that would directly affect bank performance during the financial crisis. In a broad historical analysis that extends from the rise of the first modern chartered banks in the 1780s through the major financial crises of the twentieth century and the Basel Capital Accord of 1988, Dr. Pernell shows how the different (and sometimes competing) principles of order embedded in each country's regulatory and political institutions gave rise to distinctive visions of order and prosperity, which shaped subsequent financial regulatory design. Dr. Pernell argues that the different worldviews of national banking regulators reflected cultural beliefs about the ideal way to organize economic life to promote order, stability, and prosperity. Visions of Financial Order offers an innovative perspective on the persistent differences between regulatory institutions and the ways they shaped the unfolding of the 2008 global financial crisis. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

When we talk about debt and its impact on our economy, we almost always mean “government debt.” However, this is only a small part of the picture: individuals, private firms, and households owe trillions, and these private debts are vital to understanding the economy. In The Paradox of Debt: A New Path to Prosperity Without Crisis (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023), Richard Vague examines the assets, liabilities, and incomes of the entire country, private and public sector, to reveal its net worth. His holistic analysis shows that the real factor that drives both financial crises and spiraling inequality—but also, paradoxically, economic growth—is ever rising private debt. The paradox is that while debt is essential and our economy relies on it, it also brings instability unless it is periodically deleveraged—and that is very hard to do. It can, however, be carefully managed, and Vague ends the book by showing how to do so in policy areas ranging from trade and housing to financial policy and student debt. Underpinned by pioneering data analysis and the author's lifetime of experience in the financial world, this book is essential for anyone who wants to understand the deep, underlying dynamics of the American economy. Following a career that has spanned fields as varied as banking, energy, credit, and the arts, Richard Vague has recently served as Secretary of Banking and Securities for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He is the author of numerous books, including An Illustrated Business History of the United States, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Economists in the Cold War: How a Handful of Economists Fought the Battle of Ideas (Oxford UP, 2023) is an account of the economic drivers and outcomes of the Cold War, told through the stories of seven international economists, who were all closely involved in theory and policy in the period 1945-73. For them, the Cold War was a battle of economic ideas, a fight between central planning and market allocation, exploring economic thinking derived from the battle between Marxist and Capitalist ideologies, a fundamental difference but with many intricacies. The book recounts how economic theory advanced, how new economic tools were developed, and how policies were tested. Each chapter is based on the involvement of one of the selected economists. It was a challenging but dangerous time in economics: a time of economic recovery post-war, with industrial rebuilding, economic growth, and rising incomes. But it was also a time of ideological warfare, nuclear rivalry, military expansion, and personal conflict. The narrative is approximately chronological, ranging from the Potsdam Conference in Germany to the Pinochet Coup in Chile. The selected economists include an American, a Pole, a Hungarian, a German, a British, a Japanese, and an Argentinian, all very different economists, but with interconnections among them. Each chapter also features a dissenting economist who held a contrasting view, and recounts the subsequent economic arguments that played out. Alan Bollard is a Professor of Economics at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He formerly managed APEC, the largest regional economic integration organization in the world, and was previously the New Zealand Reserve Bank Governor, Secretary of the New Zealand Treasury, and Chairman of the New Zealand Commerce Commission. Professor Bollard is the author of Crisis: One Central Bank Governor and the Global Financial Crisis (Auckland University Press, 2013) and A Few Hares to Chase: The Life and Economics of Bill Philips (Oxford University Press, 2016). Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

International Development Law: Rule of Law, Human Rights & Global Finance (Springer, 2020) describes how international development works, its shortcomings, its theoretical and practical foundations, along with prescriptions for the future. It provides the reader with new perspectives on the origins of global poverty, identifies legal impediments to sustainable economic growth, and provides a better understanding of the challenges faced by the international community in resolving global poverty issues. The text is structured into two basic parts: the first part deals with the theoretical and philosophic foundations of the subject, and the second part sets forth issues relating to the international financial architecture, namely, international borrowing practices, privatization, and emerging economies.  In particular, the book provides new, innovative analysis on corruption as an impediment to sustainable development. The three interlocking facets of corruption are examined: transnational organized crime, Islamic-based international terrorism, and corruption within emerging economies and the international banking system. Thus fresh new analysis adds depth and clarity to a field that heretofore has been scattered and superficial. Finally, the “right to development” within the international human rights discourse is critically reviewed, particularly in light of new jurisprudence emerging from the African context.This book offers a fresh, new and balanced legal perspective on the development process. The text has been rigorously researched and has many practical facets based on the author's professional experience within the international development field. It is an invaluable research and teaching tool since it takes a multidisciplinary approach to putting complex issues, legal trends and political questions into a clear, new perspective that is highly analytical as well as accessible to the reader. The author's elegant legal prose is both powerful and persuasive. Rumu Sarkar is Adjunct Law Professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Meltdown: Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse (Pegasus Books, 2024) is a great business history book. It meticulously chronicles the story of a large and once revered Swiss Bank, Credit Suisse, from its foundation in 1856 until how a series of scandals, driven by a culture of greed and entitlement among its bankers, led to the bank´s ultimate collapses in March 2023. The narrative also explores the bank's international expansion, particularly its partnership with First Boston in the United States. Meltdown is not just a history of Credit Suisse but a broader investigation into the systemic issues of greed, lies, and ambition that plague the financial industry. It raises critical questions about the future of big banks in a world where transparency and accountability are increasingly demanded. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

What are fallen tyrants owed? What makes debt illegitimate? And when is bankruptcy moral? Drawing on new archival sources, this book shows how Latin American nations have wrestled with the morality of indebtedness and insolvency since their foundation, and outlines how their history can shed new light on contemporary global dilemmas. With a focus on the early modern Spanish Empire and modern Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina, and based on archival research carried out across seven countries, Odious Debt: Bankruptcy, International Law, and the Making of Latin America (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Edward Jones Corredera studies 400 years of history and unearths overlooked congressional debates and understudied thinkers. The book shows how discussions on the morality of debt and default played a structuring role in the construction and codification of national constitutions, identities, and international legal norms in Latin America. This new history of the moral economy of the Hispanic World from the 1520s to the 1920s illuminates contemporary issues in international law and international relations. Latin American jurists developed a global critique of economics and international law that continues to generate pressing questions about debt, bankruptcy, reparations, and the pursuit of a moral global economy. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

In the late nineteenth century, as much of the world adopted some variant of the gold standard, China remained the most populous country still using silver. Yet China had no unified national currency; there was not one monetary standard but many. Silver coins circulated alongside chunks of silver and every transaction became an "encounter of wits." China and the End of Global Silver, 1873–1937 (Cornell UP, 2020) focuses on how officials, policy makers, bankers, merchants, academics, and journalists in China and around the world answered a simple question: how should China change its monetary system? Far from a narrow, technical issue, Chinese monetary reform is a dramatic story full of political revolutions, economic depressions, chance, and contingency. As different governments in China attempted to create a unified monetary standard in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the United States, England, and Japan tried to shape the direction of Chinese monetary reform for their own benefit.  Austin Dean argues convincingly that the Silver Era in world history ended owing to the interaction of imperial competition in East Asia and the state-building projects of different governments in China. When the Nationalist government of China went off the silver standard in 1935, it marked a key moment not just in Chinese history but in world history. Austin Dean is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His work has appeared in Modern China and the Journal of American-East Asian Relations. He is on twitter @thelicentiate. Ghassan Moazzin is an Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong. He works on the economic and business history of 19th and 20th century China, with a particular focus on the history of foreign banking, international finance and electricity in modern China. His first book, tentatively titled Foreign Banks and Global Finance in Modern China: Banking on the Chinese Frontier, 1870–1919, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

How the creation of money and monetary policy can be more democratic. The power to create money is foundational to the state. In the United States, that power has been largely delegated to private banks governed by an independent central bank. Putting monetary policy in the hands of a set of insulated, nonelected experts has fueled the popular rejection of expertise as well as a widespread dissatisfaction with democratically elected officials.  In Our Money: Monetary Policy as If Democracy Matters (Princeton UP, 2024), Leah Downey makes a principled case against central bank independence (CBI) by both challenging the economic theory behind it and developing a democratic rationale for sustaining the power of the legislature to determine who can create money and on what terms. How states govern money creation has an impact on the capacity of the people and their elected officials to steer policy over time. In a healthy democracy, Downey argues, the balance of power over money creation matters. Downey applies and develops democratic theory through an exploration of monetary policy. In so doing, she develops a novel theory of independent agencies in the context of democratic government, arguing that states can employ expertise without being ruled by experts. Downey argues that it is through iterative governance, the legislature knowing and regularly showing its power over policy, that the people can retain their democratic power to guide policy in the modern state. As for contemporary macroeconomic arguments in defense of central bank independence, Downey suggests that the purported economic benefits do not outweigh the democratic costs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

In theory, bankruptcy in America exists to cancel or restructure debts for people and companies that have way too many--a safety valve designed to provide a mechanism for restarting lives and businesses when things go wrong financially. In this brilliant and paradigm-shifting book, legal scholar Melissa B. Jacoby shows how bankruptcy has also become an escape hatch for powerful individuals, corporations, and governments, contributing in unseen and poorly understood ways to race, gender, and class inequality in America. When cities go bankrupt, for example, police unions enjoy added leverage while police brutality victims are denied a seat at the negotiating table; the system is more forgiving of civil rights abuses than of the parking tickets disproportionately distributed in African American neighborhoods. Across a broad range of crucial issues, Unjust Debts: How Our Bankruptcy System Makes America More Unequal (New Press, 2024) reveals the hidden mechanisms by which bankruptcy impacts everything from sexual harassment to health care, police violence to employment discrimination, and the opioid crisis to gun violence. In the tradition of Matthew Desmond's groundbreaking Evicted, Unjust Debts is a riveting and original work of accessible scholarship with huge implications for ordinary people and will set the terms of debate for this vital subject. Melissa B. Jacoby is the Graham Kenan Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Benjamin Shestakofsky about his book, Behind the Startup: How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality (U California Press, 2024). Shestakofsky is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is affiliated with AI at Wharton and the Center on Digital Culture and Society. His research centers on how digital technologies are affecting work and employment, organizations, and economic exchange. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

The China Business Conundrum: Ensure That "Win-Win" Doesn't Mean Western Companies Lose Twice (Wiley, 2024) describes former CEO of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) Ken Wilcox's firsthand challenges he encountered in four years “on the ground” trying to establish a joint venture between SVB and the Chinese government to fund local innovation design―and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) efforts to systematically sabotage the project and steal SVB's business model. This book provides actionable advice drawn from meticulous notes Wilcox took from interviews with people from all walks of Chinese life, including Party and non-Party members, the business elite, and domestic workers. Describing a China he found fascinating and maddeningly complex, this book explores topics including: Difficulties in transplanting SVB's model to China, from misunderstandings about titles and responsibilities to pitched battles over toilet design Ethics and practices widely adopted by Chinese businesses today and why China must be met with realistic expectations Wilcox's own honest missteps and the painfully learned lessons that came afterwards Engrossing, enlightening, and entertaining, The China Business Conundrum: Ensure That "Win-Win" Doesn't Mean Western Companies Lose Twice is an essential cautionary tale and guidebook for anyone seeking to do business in or with China, and an essential first-person account for academics trying to understand China's unique political economy and development trajectory. Ken Wilcox was the CEO of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) from 2001 to 2011, then the CEO of SVB's joint venture with Shanghai Pudong Development Bank (SPDB-SVB) in Shanghai until 2015, followed by four years as its Vice Chairman. He currently serves on the boards of the Asia Society of Northern California, the Asian Art Museum, and UC San Diego's 21st Century China Center, as well as Columbia Lake Partners, a European venture-debt fund. He is on the Board of Advisors of the Fudan University School of Management in Shanghai and teaches as an Adjunct Professor at U.C. Berkeley. Ken holds a PhD in German from Ohio State University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He is a former member of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. He has given numerous speeches in both English and Chinese, published a variety of articles in the banking press, and recently wrote the management book “Leading Through Culture: How Real Leaders Create Cultures That Motivate People to Achieve Great Things” (Waterside Productions, 2020) and its accompanying workbook, “How About You?” (Waterside Productions, 2023). The father of two sons, he lives in San Francisco with his wife, Ruth, and several antique cars. For more of Ken's insights, follow his substack. Interviewer Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of San Francisco, a nonresident scholar at the UCSD 21st Century China Center, an alumnus of the Public Intellectuals Program of the National Committee on US-China Relations, and is currently a visiting scholar at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions. His research focuses on the economics of information, incentives, and institutions, primarily as applied to the development and governance of China. He created the unique Master's of Science in Applied Economics at the University of San Francisco, which teaches the conceptual frameworks and practical data analytics skills needed to succeed in the digital economy. Lorentzen's other NBN interviews relating to China's tech sector include From Click to Boom, on the political economy of e-commerce in China, Trafficking Data, on how Chinese and American firms exploit user data, The Tao of Alibaba, on Alibaba's business model and organizational culture, Surveillance State, on China's digital surveillance, Prototype Nation, on the culture and politics of China's innovation economy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

This is the final episode of Cited's most recent season, Use & Abuse of Economic Expertise, a season that tells stories of the political and scholarly battles behind the economic ideas that shape our world. For a full list of credits, and for the rest of the episodes, visit the series page. They will back with a new season focussed on environmental politics in early 2025, so make sure you are subscribed to the podcast (Apple, Spotify, manual RSS). The MAGA movement scores big wins by taking cheap shots at experts. Now, some worry that Donald Trump could try to oust Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. The typical centrist position is to defend the supposedly impartial, apolitical expertise of such figures. Yet, we know that is not exactly right either. Is there a better way to imagine a better bank? In our first segment, we speak with Frances Coppala, author of The Case for People's Quantitative Easing. It's something of a case study in Fed politics, revealing how their decisions post-Global Financial Crisis served the rich, and not working people. Yet, saying that these experts are political does not mean we have to be hyper-partisan reactionary hacks. Instead, democratizing the bank could offer a better way forward. That's according to Annelise Riles, a professor of law and of anthropology, and author of the book Financial Citizenship: Experts, Publics, and the Politics of Central Banking. Riles is also host the Foreign Policy podcast Everyday Ambassador, which its new second season out now. What would democratizing the Fed look like, and would that really counter the powerful financial interests that have so thoroughly captured the institution? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Since the global financial crisis that began in 2008, the role of the financial sector in contemporary capitalism has come under increasing scrutiny. In the global North, the expansion of the financial sector over the last 40 years has paralleled a decline in manufacturing employment and an increase in personal indebtedness, giving rise to the perception that speculation and usury have come to replace production as the engine of economic growth. In the global South, financial liberalization has exacerbated long-standing patterns of boom-and-bust cycles, and the growth of the financial sector has caused anxieties that speculative investments in natural resource extraction, urban real estate, and rural farm land are dispossessing and displacing people rather than improving human development. Overall, the growth of the financial sector has created the perception that we're entering a new phase in capitalism's history in which speculation and rent-seeking have displaced production as the engines of economic growth. My guest today, the political economist Nick Bernards, challenges this narrative. In his new book, Fictions of Financialization: Rethinking Speculation, Exploitation and Twenty-First Century Capitalism (Pluto Press, 2024), Bernards argues that we need to re-center labor in narratives about the expansion of finance, that speculation and the subsumption of nature are always central to capitalism, and that major private-sector financial institutions have actually been reluctant to invest in major development projects in the global south. The main problem with the growth of finance is that it makes more exploitation, displacement, and environmental damage – in short, more capitalism – possible. Nick Bernards is Associate Professor of Global Sustainable Development at the University of Warwick. He is the author of A Critical History of Poverty Finance (Pluto, 2022) and The Global Governance of Precarity (Routledge, 2018). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

In this deeply researched and compelling narrative, journalist Mara Kardas-Nelson examines the complex history and impact of microfinance - the practice of giving small loans to poor people, particularly women, that was once hailed as a revolutionary solution to global poverty. Through intimate portraits of borrowers in Sierra Leone and extensive interviews with key figures in the microfinance movement, Kardas-Nelson reveals how an idea that began with noble intentions became a multi-billion dollar industry with sometimes devastating consequences for the very people it aimed to help. We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky: The Seductive Promise of Microfinance (Metropolitan Books, 2024) weaves together two parallel narratives: the stories of women in Sierra Leone struggling with high-interest microloans while trying to support their families, and the history of how microfinance evolved from a small experiment into a global phenomenon championed by the likes of Hillary Clinton and Muhammad Yunus. Through careful reporting and historical analysis, Kardas-Nelson explores how problematic ideologies about poverty, entrepreneurship, and individual responsibility shaped the development of microfinance programs, often overlooking local economic realities and existing informal lending practices. What makes this book particularly valuable is how it challenges conventional narratives about microfinance without dismissing the real needs that drive people to seek these loans. Through detailed portraits of women in Sierra Leone, Kardas-Nelson shows how borrowers navigate a complex web of debt, social obligations, and economic pressures. The author raises important questions about whether encouraging poor people to take on high-interest debt is truly the best way to address poverty, while also examining alternative approaches like direct cash transfers and comprehensive social services. This timely investigation offers crucial insights for anyone interested in international development, poverty alleviation, and the often unintended consequences of well-meaning interventions in the lives of the world's poor. Through meticulous reporting and thoughtful analysis, Kardas-Nelson challenges readers to think more critically about how we approach poverty alleviation and what truly constitutes meaningful economic development. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

In Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman's Bank (W. W. Norton, 2024), Justene Hill Edwards exposes how the rise and tragic failure of the Freedman's Bank has shaped economic inequality in America. In the years immediately after the Civil War, tens of thousands of former slaves deposited millions of dollars into the Freedman's Bank. African Americans envisioned this new bank as a launching pad for economic growth and self-determination. But only nine years after it opened, their trust was betrayed and the Freedman's Bank collapsed. Fully informed by new archival findings, historian Justene Hill Edwards unearths a major turning point in American history in this comprehensive account of the Freedman's Bank and its depositors. She illuminates the hope with which the bank was first envisioned and demonstrates the significant setback that the sabotage of the bank caused in the fight for economic autonomy. Hill Edwards argues for a new interpretation of its tragic failure: the bank's white financiers drove the bank into the ground, not Fredrick Douglass, its final president, or its Black depositors and cashiers. A page-turning story filled with both well-known figures like Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Jay and Henry Cooke, and General O. O. Howard, and less well-known figures like Dr. Charles B. Purvis, John Mercer Langston, Congressman Robert Smalls, and Ellen Baptiste Lubin. Savings and Trust is necessary reading for those seeking to understand the roots of racial economic inequality in America. Justene Hill Edwards is an associate professor of history at the University of Virginia and the author of both Unfree Markets and a forthcoming Norton Short on the history of inequality in America. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. Twitter. Website. Brian Hamilton is chair of the Department of History and Social Science at Deerfield Academy. Twitter. Website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Oil is everywhere. It's in our cars, it's in the fertilizer used to grow our food, and it's in the plastics used to produce and transport our consumer goods, to name just a few prominent uses. How did oil come to occupy its central position in the world economy? How did corporate power shape the uptake, pricing, and distribution of oil and petrochemicals? And how have changes in oil markets affected broader trends in the global economy? In Crude Capitalism: Oil, Corporate Power, and the Making of the World Market (Verso, 2024), my guest Adam Hanieh tackles all of these questions by tracing the history and diverse geographies of oil. His narratives weaves together links between oil, geopolitics, high finance, the evolution of corporate organization, and the environment. Adam Hanieh is Professor of Political Economy and Global Development at the University of Exeter in the UK. He is currently a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He is previous books are Lineages of Revolt (2013) and Money, Markets, and Monarchies: The Gulf Cooperation Council and the political economy of the contemporary Middle East (2020). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

This is episode two Cited Podcast's new season, the Use & Abuse of Economic Expertise. This season tells stories of the political and scholarly battles behind the economic ideas that shape our world. For a full list of credits, and for the rest of the episodes, visit the series page. This episode looks at shifting landscape of economic thinking within the Democratic Party. First, historian Lily Geismer, author of Left Behind: The Democrats' Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality, tells us the story of how the Democrats became captured by the Clintonian ‘Third Way.' The Third Way argued that economic policy should move away from the sunset industries, like the unionized industrial labour that typically made the Democratic base, and move towards the sunrise industries of tech and finance. Then, the Biden team came to see this thinking as precipitating the rise of Trumpism. So free-wheeling trade and industrial policy is out, and the Clinton-era neoliberal consensus just is not a consensus anymore–some even claim neoliberalism is dead. Bidenomics replaced it, whatever that is. Yet, Bidenomics was a political dud, and now it looks like it might be on the way out. Where is the US' economic policy thinking going on November 5th, and beyond? We try to figure that out, with the help of political economist Mark Blyth, author of the forthcoming Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

From the emergence of money in the ancient world to today's interconnected landscape of high-frequency trading and cryptocurrency, the story of finance has always taken place on an international stage. Finance is one of the most globalized and networked of human activities, and one of the most important social technologies ever invented. Atlas of Finance: Mapping the Global Story of Money (Yale University Press, 2024) by Dr. Dariusz Wójcik is the first visually based book dedicated to finance and uses graphics and maps to bring the complex and abstract world of finance down to earth, showing how geography is fundamental for understanding finance, and vice versa. It illuminates the people—including Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes—who have shaped our thinking about global finance; brings to life the ways that place-specific histories, laws, regulations, and institutions influence finance; shows how finance relates to innovation, globalization, and environmental change; and details how finance plays a key part in drawing the landscape of uneven development, inequality, and instability. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

At a time when critiques of free trade policies are gaining currency, The Neomercantilists: A Global Intellectual History (Cornell UP, 2021) helps make sense of the protectionist turn, providing the first intellectual history of the genealogy of neomercantilism. Eric Helleiner identifies many pioneers of this ideology between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries who backed strategic protectionism and other forms of government economic activism to promote state wealth and power. They included not just the famous Friedrich List, but also numerous lesser-known thinkers, many of whom came from outside of the West. Helleiner's novel emphasis on neomercantilism's diverse origins challenges traditional Western-centric understandings of its history. It illuminates neglected local intellectual traditions and international flows of ideas that gave rise to distinctive varieties of the ideology around the globe, including in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. This rich history left enduring intellectual legacies, including in the two dominant powers of the contemporary world economy: China and the United States. The result is an exceptional study of a set of profoundly influential economic ideas. While rooted in the past, it sheds light on the present moment. The Neomercantilists shows how we might construct more global approaches to the study of international political economy and intellectual history, devoting attention to thinkers from across the world, and to the cross-border circulation of thought. Eric Helleiner is an author and professor of political science and the Faculty of Arts Chair in International Political Economy at the University of Waterloo. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Are financial markets lawless and irrational? It may seem that way from the outside, but for market insiders there are multiples sets of rules that they break at their peril.  Official rules set by law or by the exchanges exist alongside unofficial rules, or floor rules. Between these, it is the floor rules -- the norms followed by other insiders -- that matter most. Breaking an official rule might lead to a fine or even jail. Breaking floor rules can lead to being ostracized from markets as well as social and financial ruin. In Floor Rules: Insider Culture in Financial Markets (Yale UP, 2024), Mark W. Geiger tells compelling stories of market disturbances in which insider rules played a key role. He examines the norms, customs, values, and operating modes of insiders at the center of financial markets that trade money, stocks, bonds, futures, and other financial derivatives. These core insiders are a relatively small group who govern the markets.  The book tells the riveting story of Benjamin Hutchinson, who made national news for his dramatic 1888 wheat market corner in Chicago, in which he outsmarted four powerful traders who had joined to force him out of the market, survived a life-threatening physical assault on the trading floor, and almost brought down the Chicago wheat market.  It also unpacks the LIBOR scandal of 2008 in which bankers in major international firms manipulated interbank loan rates to inflate their own profits at the expense of investors and at tremendous risk to the industry.  Geiger analyzes the cultural history of market trading, describes the role of insiders, and suggests where this peculiar, ingrown culture is heading in an era of technological change. The book releases on October 29, the 95th anniversary of the Black Tuesday crash of 1929, the beginning of the Great Depression.  Related resources: Mark Geiger's personal website and portfolio of generative AI artwork Author recommended reading: Den of Thieves by James B. Stewart Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception by George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller Hosted by Meghan Cochran  NOTE: Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress should have been pronounced with a hard "g" as in kloo-ghee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Sequels, reboots, franchises, and songs that remake old songs—does it feel like everything new in popular culture is just derivative of something old? Contrary to popular belief, the reason is not audiences or marketing, but Wall Street. In this book, Andrew deWaard shows how the financial sector is dismantling the creative capacity of cultural industries by upwardly redistributing wealth, consolidating corporate media, harming creative labor, and restricting our collective media culture. Moreover, financialization is transforming the very character of our mediascapes for branded transactions. Our media are increasingly shaped by the profit-extraction techniques of hedge funds, asset managers, venture capitalists, private equity firms, and derivatives traders. Illustrated with examples drawn from popular culture, Derivative Media: How Wall Street Devours Culture (University of California Press, 2024) offers readers the critical financial literacy necessary to understand the destructive financialization of film, television, and popular music—and provides a plan to reverse this dire threat to culture. A free digital version of this title is available here. Andrew deWaard is Assistant Professor of Media and Popular Culture at the University of California, San Diego, and coauthor of The Cinema of Steven Soderbergh: Indie Sex, Corporate Lies, and Digital Videotape. Peter C. Kunze is assistant professor of communication at Tulane University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Economics sometimes feels like a physics–so sturdy, so objective, and so immutable. Yet, behind every clean number or eye-popping graph, there is usually a rather messy story, a story shaped by values, interests, ideologies, and petty bureaucratic politics. In Cited Podcast's new mini-series, the Use and Abuse of Economic Expertise, we tell the hidden stories of the economic ideas that shape our world. For future episodes of our series, and a full list of credits, visit our series page. On episode one, we begin at the beginning: the invention of the modern economy, or at least the idea of the economy. It starts with one measure: the GDP, or gross domestic product. It's a measure that comes to define what we mean by ‘the economy.' Before GDP, we did not really speak in those terms. Cited producer Alec Opperman talks to sociologist Dan Hirshman, who brings the story of the man who pioneered the GDP, Simon Kuznets. Yet, the GDP was not the measure the Kuznets hoped it would be. It's a story that reveals the surprisingly contentious politics of counting things up. Plus, what about alternatives to GDP? The Genuine Progress Indicator, the Human Development Index, the Green GDP, and so on. These measures are said to be more progressive, as they often capture things we value (like, care work for instance), and subtracting out things we could use less off (like, environmental degradation). Scholars and policy wonks have been raging about these types of measures for decades, but they have not taken off. Why? Economic historian Dirk Philipsen, author of The Little Big Number: How GDP Came to Rule the World and What to Do About It (Princeton UP, 2017), talks to Alec about why a good number alone is never enough to change the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Discussing money is always accompanied by controversy as well as enchantment. Debating what money is and how it performs its main functions in the contemporary economy is fundamental to understanding the social consequences of money transformation associated with the digital revolution. This book explores the links between the current and prospective properties of money, its production, and its relationship to the concepts of value, the common good, and innovation. Contested Money: Towards a New Social Contract (Routledge, 2023) opens a debate on the role that money could play in a different paradigm based on a renewed conception of monetary properties and functions that are capable of having a positive impact on social and individual welfare. Massó outlines the fundamentals of this monetary model, which would operate as a parallel currency, where the processes of monetary and value creation are connected in a new deal between the citizen and the state, grounded on an approach of reciprocal rights and responsibilities. This book will appeal to scholars, students, and, more broadly, readers interested in a contemporary understanding of what money is, how it is being transformed, and the role that it can play in redefining the twenty-first-century social contract. Matilde Massó is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Communication Sciences at the University of A Coruña (UDC). Her main research interests focus on the transformations of money, the role of culture and emotions in economic processes, and how technological innovation is shaping a new conception of the economy concerning theories of justice. She has extensive experience leading research projects in economic sociology, particularly in financialization studies, the sociology of money, and financial innovation. Her recent publications include Contested Money (Routledge, 2024) and Why Money Matters? (Journal of Economic Issues, 2023). Additionally, she was awarded a Marie Curie IF Action in 2016. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

When U.S. presidents clash with corporate titans, what tips the balance of power? In The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between Commanders in Chief and Titans of Industry (Regnery History, 2024), acclaimed presidential historian Tevi Troy takes readers on a riveting journey through the biggest battles between CEOs and the nation's commander in chief. He unearths the untold stories - both political and personal - that have shaped America. Troy shows how the vast reach of the federal government become a critical fact of life for every business, entrepreneur, and innovator. Today, companies find themselves navigating a competitive landscape defined by stringent regulations, so top CEOs and key business leaders must influence the legislative and regulatory system. As public affairs teams and government relations experts put forward strategies to survive Washington, CEOs have become the most important warrior on the frontlines. The Power and the Money shows how some of the nation's most important CEOs forged (and fumbled) relationships with the president. Troy also shows how the most powerful man in the world depends on CEOs. CEOs provide assistance in the form of personnel, policy insights, and campaign cash, but they also become essential foils for presidents, serving as both allies and convenient enemies. The Power and the Money reveals an intricate web of power, where CEOs need presidents, and presidents need CEOs. Troy shows how each must step carefully - or risk unpredictable costs and collateral damage. From heavyweights John D. Rockefeller and Mark Zuckerberg to Katherine Graham, Elon Musk, and more, Troy takes readers inside the friendships and the conflicts that shook the American economy and re-shaped America. Drawing on his experiences as bestselling historian and former senior White House aide, Troy offers unique insights and details that shed light on the growing, intertwining behemoths of government and big business - and what it means for the future of our nation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Commercial Banking in Kenya: A History from Colonisation to Digital Age (Routledge, 2024) investigates the impact of commercial banks in Kenya right through from their origins, to their role during the colonial period, the process of adaptation following independence, and up to their responses to new challenges and economic policies in the twenty-first century. The British colonisation of East Africa required the development of diverse political, social and economic institutions to advance and exercise control over the territories and their populations. Multinational commercial banks were among the first institutions, with the National Bank of India, Standard Bank of South Africa and Barclays Bank DCO all setting up business in Kenya, whilst continuing to maintain close relationships with the UK and other colonial actors. This book assesses the impact of commercial banks during the last years of colonial domination and the tools they used to adapt in the first decades of independence. The book concludes by considering how the colonial banking system has influenced the development of modern financial institutions in Kenya in the twenty-first century. This book argues that commercial banks are fundamental to understanding African colonies, and the foundations over which the financial system of contemporary Africa was constructed. It will be of interest to researchers of banking, economic history, the colonial period, and African studies. Christian Velasco was born in Mexico City and studied History at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where he specialized in economic history. In 2013, he was awarded a master's degree at the London School of Economics, with a comparative study of banking in Ghana and Botswana. The University of Warwick awarded him a PhD in 2019, working under the supervision of David Anderson and Daniel Branch, with a dissertation titled The Kenyan Banking System: From Colonial Expansion to Independence Uncertainty, 1950–1970. He is currently full-time academic staff at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica (CIDE) in Mexico City. Other publications discussed during the interview are: Rouse, M. , Bátiz-Lazo, B., and Carbo-Valverde, S. (2023) ‘M-Pesa and the role of the entrepreneurial state in a cashless technology to deliver an inclusive financial sector', Essays in Economic and Business History, 41, pp. 109-133. Velasco, C. (2022), "The African Savers and the Post Office Savings Bank in Colonial Kenya (1910–1954)," The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, DOI: 10.1080/03086534.2021.2020426 Willis, J. & Velasco, C. (2024), "Saving, Inheritance and Future-Making in 1940s Kenya," Past & Present, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtae013 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

What threatens American democracy and the rule of law? In her new book, Corporatocracy: How to Protect Democracy from Dark Money and Corrupt Politicians (NYU Press, 2024), legal scholar and campaign spending expert Ciara Torres-Spelliscy argues that the USA's privately-funded campaign finance system – combined with corporate greed and antidemocratic strains in the modern Republican Party – endangers American democracy. As she sees it, unseen political actors and untraceable dark money influence our elections, while anti-democratic rhetoric threatens a tilt towards authoritarianism. Drawing on key Supreme Court cases such as Citizens United, Professor Torres-Spelliscy explores how corporations have undermined democratic norms, practices, and laws. From bankrolling regressive politicians to funding ghost candidates with dark money, the book exposes how corporations subvert the will of the American people – yet courts struggle to hold corporate interests and corrupt politicians accountable. If American democracy is going to survive in the long term, then the deep pockets of the largest corporations cannot be allowed to join focus with the anti-democratic fringe. Professor Torres-Spelliscy fears a repeat of the January 6th insurrection – but with expansive corporate sponsorship. Professor Torres Spelliscy outlines the ways in which Corporate forces might be held accountable by the courts, their shareholders, and citizens themselves. Along with other reforms, she proposes a democracy litmus test that requires loyalty to democracy in politics and the economy. The end of the podcast features her insights on how oil interests crypto “techno bros” have invested in the outcome of the November 2024 election. Ciara Torres-Spelliscy is a Professor of Law at Stetson Law. She is also a Brennan Center Fellow at NYU Law School who has testified before Congress as an expert on campaign finance and has helped draft Supreme Court briefs. Previously, she authored Corporate Citizen (Carolina 2016) and Political Brands (Elgar 2019). She has recently written about public financing and the Eric Adams indictments and crypto spending in the 2024 election. Mentioned in the podcast: Judd Legum's work on corporate PACs in his Substack, Popular Information Photo with Barack Obama for which Jho Low paid $20 million can be seen here Example of 2022 media attempts to identify “sedition caucus” and election deniers for voters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

There was nothing inevitable or natural about the rise of US finance capitalism in the early twentieth century.  In Dollars and Dominion: US Bankers and the Making of a Superpower, Mary Bridges shows how US foreign banking began as a side hustle of Gilded Age tycoons and evolved into a more staid, bureaucratized network for bolstering US influence overseas. The early waves of US bankers built a network of international branch banks that relied on the power of the US government, copied the example of British foreign bankers, and built new alliances with local elites.   Overseas bank branches provided sites for experimentation in how to fuse US political will with local innovations and on-the-ground improvisation. In the process, branch bankers constructed a flexible and durable new infrastructure that supported the growth of US power abroad.  Using details from ledger entries and other sources, Bridges shows how these branch bankers divided their local communities into groups of “us” and "them," either as potential clients or local populations. In doing so, they constructed a new architecture of US trade finance that relied on long-standing inequalities and hierarchies of privilege. Thus, ideas developed by wealthy white men became part of the enduring fabric of financial infrastructure. She also shows how bank branches could accommodate these hierarchies to make room for new ideas about serving local markets, in response to financial pressures of the 1920s and after the Great Depression cut off other avenues of growth.  Bridges also tells the story of how US bankers created a market based on a new financial asset enabled by the Federal Reserve System called bankers' acceptance and began to collect vast amounts of foreign credit information.  Related resources: Bankers and Empire: How Wall Street Colonized the Caribbean by Peter James Hudson Infrastructure Is Remaking Geopolitics: How Power Flows from the Systems That Connect the World by Mary Bridges  Author recommended reading:   Plastic Capitalism: Banks, Credit Cards, and the End of Financial Control by Sean H. Vanatta The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives by Ernest Scheyder Hosted by Meghan Cochran  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

State capitalism. Socialism with Chinese characteristics. A socialist market economy. There have been numerous descriptions of the Chinese economy. However, none seems to capture the predatory, at times surreal, nature of the economy of the world's most populous nation – nor the often bruising and mind-bending experience of doing business with the Middle Kingdom. Ian Williams, a long-standing reporter on China, has a new argument in Vampire State: The Rise and Fall of the Chinese Economy (Birlinn, 2024).  Rules and agreements mean little. Markets are distorted, statistics fabricated, foreign industrial secrets and technology systematically stolen. Companies and entrepreneurs, at home and abroad, are bullied – often with the collusion of the victims themselves. The Party is in every boardroom and lab, with businesses thriving or dying at its will.  All this is part of realising President Xi Jinping's ambition of China becoming the world's pre-eminent economic, technological and military power. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

In The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America (U Chicago Press, 2024), Andrew W. Kahrl uncovers the history of inequitable and predatory tax laws in the United States. He examines the structural traps within America's tax system that have forced Black Americans to pay more for less despite being taxpayers with fewer resources compared to white taxpayers. Kahrl exposes these practices, From Reconstruction up to the present, Kahrl exposes these practices to describe how discrimination continues to take new forms, even as people continue to fight for their rights, their assets, and their power. Dr. N'Kosi Oates is a curator. He earned his Ph.D. in Africana Studies at Brown University. Find him on Twitter at DrNKosiOates. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

After close to three decades of the hegemony of free market ideas, the state has made a big comeback as an economic actor since the 2008 financial crisis. China's state-owned companies and international financial institutions have made headlines for their growing influence in the world economy. State-backed investment vehicles based in the Gulf states have made high-profile investments in global real estate markets and professional sports, while their state-owned firms have become world leaders in the logistics and natural resource sectors. Governments around the world – including in the heartlands of advanced capitalism – have promoted the interests of ‘national champion' companies in strategic economic sectors, bailed out financial institutions by taking toxic assets off of their balance sheets, and implemented industrial policies with the aim of moving into the most profitable segments of global value chains. What accounts for this renewed prominence of states in global capitalism? Does the increased activism of states mark the end of neoliberal hegemony? And how do contemporary state-led economic initiatives compare to the heyday of Keynesian and developmentalist policy agendas in the decades immediately following World War II? The book that we are discussing today, The Spectre of State Capitalism (Oxford UP, 2024) by Ilias Alami and Adam Dixon, marks the culmination of a highly productive research project that the authors have led on the compulsions and constraints that shape the ‘new' state capitalism. The book aims to challenge narratives that pathologize state capitalism as an authoritarian deviation from the ‘normal' course of free market capitalism while also showing how new forms of state activism depart from earlier models of state-led development. Ilias Alami is a University assistant professor in the political economy of development at Cambrdige University. His previous book is Money Power and Financial Capital in Emerging Markets (2019). Adam Dixon holds the Adam Smith Chair in Sustainable Capitalism at Heriot Watt University's Ediburgh Business School. He is the author of several books, most recently Sovereign Wealth Funds: Between States and Markets (2022). This book is available open access here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance