New Books in Finance

For this episode of Liminal Library, I interviewed Dan Davies about The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions—and How the World Lost Its Mind (U Chicago Press, 2025). Davies examines how we've systematically engineered responsibility out of our institutions, creating a world where major decisions happen without clear human accountability. Davies draws on Stafford Beer's cybernetics to explain how modern organizations function as systems with their own patterns and responses. As he puts it, "the system is not conscious and so does not have incentives, but it has consistent patterns of response to stimuli." This isn't about individual moral failures – it's about the industrialization of decision-making itself. We've moved from Harry Truman's "The Buck Stops Here" to complex processes and standardized criteria that diffuse responsibility across multiple layers. When things go wrong – financial crises, environmental failures, social breakdowns – no single person can be held accountable because no single person actually made the decision. Davies traces this transformation through three revolutions: the managerial revolution that shifted control from owners to professional administrators, the cybernetic revolution that offered tools to understand these systems but never fully materialized, and the neoliberal revolution that reshaped society while ignoring that increasingly, systems rather than people make the decisions affecting our lives. These accountability machines, as Davies calls them, operate according to their own logic and constraints. Understanding them is essential for grasping why institutional failures seem both inevitable and impossible to prevent within our current frameworks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

What does it mean to supervise a bank? And why does it matter who holds that power? In this episode, Sean H. Vanatta joins us to explore the hidden machinery behind American finance, as told in his new book Private Finance, Public Power: A History of Bank Supervision in America (Princeton UP, 2025), co-authored with Peter Conti-Brown. Spanning nearly 150 years, the book traces the evolution of bank supervision from a patchwork of state-level oversight to a complex, layered system involving federal agencies, private actors, and political discretion. Sean takes us from the wildcat banks of the 1830s to the rise of the Federal Reserve, through crises, reforms, and the quiet work of bank examiners who shaped the rules behind the scenes. We discuss why supervision differs from regulation, how discretion has become central to managing financial risk, and what the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in 2023 reveals about the enduring tension between private profit and public responsibility. Along the way, Sean shares stories of forgotten institutions, colourful characters, and the surprising role of gender and civil rights in shaping financial oversight. Whether you're a policymaker, historian, or simply curious about how money and power interact, this conversation offers a fresh perspective on the institutions that quietly govern our financial lives. Tune in for a rich and engaging journey through the history and current state of banking politics.The interview on "Plastic Capitalism" is available here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

You've got to speculate to accumulate. We apply that notion to individuals in pursuit of wealth, but what about countries? The Debt of a Nation: Land and the Financing of the Canadian Settler State, 1820–73 (U of British Columbia Press, 2025) is the first comprehensive history of Canada's nineteenth-century public debt. Beginning in the 1820s, loans gave British North American settler governments access to unprecedented amounts of capital at low interest rates. The credit for such loans derived from colonial appropriation of Indigenous territories, and this process essentially created a market value for stolen land. Dr. Angela Tozer explores the role of public debt financing in the consolidation of the Canadian settler state: Upper Canada's first public debt, issued as securities on the London Stock Exchange; the unique government land tenure of Prince Edward Island and attendant impact on Mi'kmaw homelands; and the purchase of Rupert's Land via a loan. She analyzes how an economic system centred on credit and debt relied on two factors: settlers had to become the risk bearers – though not necessarily the beneficiaries – of loans, and colonial governments had to have the power to appropriate Indigenous territories in order to appear creditworthy. This history of the intimate relationship between public debt and colonization underscores the importance of the appropriation of Indigenous lands to global markets. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning!” That legendary and apocryphal phrase, allegedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series as flames rose above Yankee Stadium, seemed to encapsulate an entire era in this nation's urban history. Across that decade, a wave of arson coursed through American cities, destroying entire neighborhoods home to poor communities of color. Yet as historian Bench Ansfield demonstrates in Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City (Norton, 2025), the vast majority of the fires were not set by residents, as is commonly assumed, but by landlords looking to collect insurance payouts. Driven by perverse incentives—new government-sponsored insurance combined with tanking property values—landlords hired “torches,” mostly Black and Brown youth, to set fires in the buildings, sometimes with people still living in them. Tens of thousands of families lost their homes to these blazes, yet for much of the 1970s, tenant vandalism and welfare fraud stood as the prevailing explanations for the arson wave, effectively indemnifying landlords. Ansfield's book, based on a decade of research, introduces the term “brownlining” for the destructive insurance practices imposed on poor communities of color under the guise of racial redress. Ansfield shows that as the FIRE industries—finance, insurance, and real estate— eclipsed manufacturing in the 1970s, they began profoundly reshaping Black and Brown neighborhoods, seeing them as easy sources of profit. At every step, Ansfield charts the tenant-led resistance movements that sprung up in the Bronx and elsewhere, as well as the explosion of popular culture around the fires, from iconic movies like The Towering Inferno to hit songs such as “Disco Inferno.” Ultimately, they show how similarly pernicious dynamics around insurance and race are still at play in our own era, especially in regions most at risk of climate shocks. Bench Ansfield is Assistant Professor of History at Temple University. They hold a PhD in American Studies from Yale University and won the Allan Nevins Prize for the best dissertation in American history from the Society of American Historians. They live in Philadelpha, Pennsylvania. Bluesky. 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

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Mary Bridges, Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, about her book, Dollars and Dominion: US Bankers and the Making of a Superpower. Dollars and Dominion takes an infrastructural view of banking institutions and examines how US banks, almost by accident, became a durable part of the global financial system in the first half of the 20th century, supporting the global dominance of the US dollar after World War II. Vinsel and Bridges also discuss the benefits and limitations of using infrastructure as a framework of analysis and the next projects Bridges is working on. Lee wrote a new essay for the Peoples & Things newsletter, “Disinvestment and Decline in Infrastructure Studies,” inspired by a key moment in the discussion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Principles of Bitcoin presents a holistic, first-principles-based framework for understanding one of the most misunderstood inventions of our time. By stripping away the hype, jargon, and superficial analysis that often surrounds the crypto industry, this book uncovers the true ingenuity behind Satoshi Nakamoto's creation—and its profound implications for the future of money, governance, and individual freedom. Vijay Selvam analyzes the technology, economics, politics, and philosophy of Bitcoin, making the case that only through this holistic understanding can we gain an appreciation of its true meaning and significance. Readers are invited to consider Bitcoin as a tool for individual empowerment, a catalyst for economic autonomy, and a challenge to traditional monetary systems. Selvam demonstrates why Bitcoin stands alone in the digital asset space as a path-dependent once-in-history invention that cannot be replicated. Principles of Bitcoin is an invaluable resource for professionals in the financial world seeking a rigorous and accessible understanding of Bitcoin. Students, curious thinkers, and all who find the technology daunting will also benefit from its clear, foundational approach. Equipping readers with the tools to grasp the many facets of Bitcoin, this book is an ideal guide to exploring its role in shaping a more decentralized, transparent, and equitable future. Vijay Selvam is a corporate lawyer and financial services expert with nearly twenty years of experience across the United States, United Kingdom, and Asia. He spent more than a decade at Goldman Sachs and has also held leadership roles in the digital assets industry, advising on the evolving regulatory landscape. Selvam is a graduate of Harvard Law School, Oxford University, and Cardiff University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

The pursuit of wealth is considered an essential function of human nature, and greed is an unspoken civic virtue. Many of us revere billionaires and Wall Street rain-makers, then complain about “the system” being rigged, and wonder why the country doesn't seem to work for the little guy anymore. Some blame the Deep State for income inequality and corruption, and others blame capitalism, but the truth is that these issues have much deeper roots: our devotion to money is a manmade invention that has transformed over thousands of years to replace religion as the foundation of our society, and it is tearing civilization apart. In The Almightier, journalist Paul Vigna uncovers the forgotten history of money, tracing the uneasy and often accidental alliance between wealth and religion as it developed from ancient city-states to today's secular world, where religious devotion has receded and greed has stepped in to fill the void. Through engaging anecdotes, original research, and fresh perspectives on the causes of the many challenges we face today, Vigna makes a compelling argument that money has no power apart from the power we give it. Paul Vigna is an author, journalist, editor and speaker, with a particular focus on capital markets and cryptocurrencies. He is the author of Guts: The Anatomy of The Walking Dead and coauthor of The Age of Cryptocurrency and The Truth Machine. For 25 years, he was a reporter and editor for Dow Jones Newswires and the Wall Street Journal, pioneering coverage of the cryptocurrency sector. He has appeared on CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, Fox, and PBS. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Few topics have as many myths, stereotypes, and misperceptions surrounding them as that of poverty in America. The poor have been badly misunderstood since the beginnings of the country, with the rhetoric only ratcheting up in recent times. Our current era of fake news, alternative facts, and media partisanship has led to a breeding ground for all types of myths and misinformation to gain traction and legitimacy. Poorly Understood: What America Gets Wrong about Poverty (Oxford UP, 2021) is the first book to systematically address and confront many of the most widespread myths pertaining to poverty. Mark Robert Rank, Lawrence M. Eppard, and Heather E. Bullock powerfully demonstrate that the realities of poverty are much different than the myths; indeed in many ways they are more disturbing. The idealized image of American society is one of abundant opportunities, with hard work being rewarded by economic prosperity. But what if this picture is wrong? What if poverty is an experience that touches the majority of Americans? What if hard work does not necessarily lead to economic well-being? What if the reasons for poverty are largely beyond the control of individuals? And if all of the evidence necessary to disprove these myths has been readily available for years, why do they remain so stubbornly pervasive? These are much more disturbing realities to consider because they call into question the very core of America's identity. Armed with the latest research, Poorly Understood not only challenges the myths of poverty and inequality, but it explains why these myths continue to exist, providing an innovative blueprint for how the nation can move forward to effectively alleviate American poverty. Stephen Pimpare is director of the Public Service & Nonprofit Leadership program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Central bank cooperation during global financial crises has been anything but consistent. While some crises are arrested with extensive cooperation, others are left to spiral. Going beyond explanations based on state power, interests, or resources, in Bankers' Trust: How Social Relations Avert Global Financial Collapse (Cornell University Press, 2025) Dr. Aditi Sahasrabuddhe argues that central bank cooperation—or the lack thereof—often boils down to ties of trust, familiarity, and goodwill between bank leaders. These personal relations influence the likelihood of access to ad hoc, bilateral arrangements with more favorable terms. Drawing on archival evidence and elite interviews, Sahasrabuddhe uncovers just how critical interpersonal trust between central bankers has been in managing global financial crises. She tracks the emergence of such relationships in the interwar 1920s, how they helped prop up the Bretton Woods system in the 1960s, and how they prevented the 2008 global financial crisis from turning into another Great Depression. When traditional signals of credibility fell short during these periods of crisis and uncertainty, established ties of trust between central bank leaders mediated risk calculations, alleviated concerns, and helped innovate less costly solutions. Dr. Sahasrabuddhe challenges the idea that central banking is purely apolitical and technocratic. She pinpoints the unique transnational power central bank leaders hold as unelected figures who nonetheless play key roles in managing states' economies. By calling attention to the influence personal relationships can have on whether countries sink or swim during crises, Bankers' Trust asks us to reconsider the transparency and democratic accountability of global financial governance today. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Billionaires are an ultra-elite social class whose numbers are growing alongside their obscene wealth while others struggle, suffer or even die. They represent a scourge of economic inequality, but how do they get away with it? A set of dangerous and deceptive inter-connected myths portrays them as a ‘force for good': -the ‘heroic billionaire' asserts they are gallant protagonists of the American Dream gone global -the ‘generous billionaire' pretends that their philanthropic efforts and personal good deeds should be lauded for generosity and benevolence -the ‘meritorious billionaire' insists that extreme wealth is a worthy reward for individual hard work and talent -the ‘vigilante billionaire' claims to be able to solve the world's biggest problems where bureaucrats and politicians have failed. Each of these myths enables billionaire wealth and power to set us back to old-style feudalism and plutocracy. Offering a trenchant critique, Stinking Rich: The Four Myths of the Good Billionaire (Policy Press, 2025)testifies to the growing international political will to take concrete actions in supporting economic justice and democratic equality. Carl Rhodes is Professor of Organization Studies at the University of Technology Sydney. He researches the ethical and democratic dimensions of business and work. Carl regularly writes for the mainstream and independent press on issues related to ethics, politics and the economy. 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

The Pathogens of Finance: How Capitalism Breeds Vector-Borne Disease (University of California Press, 2025) by Dr. Brent Z. Kaup & Dr. Kelly F. Austin is an exploration of how the rising power and profits of Wall Street underpin the contemporary increases in and inadequate responses to vector-borne disease. Over the past fifty years, insects have transmitted infectious diseases to humans with greater frequency and in more unexpected places. To examine this phenomenon, Dr. Kaup and Dr. Austin take readers to the exurban homes of northern Virginia; the burgeoning agricultural outposts of Mato Grosso, Brazil; and the smallholder coffee farms of the Bududa District of eastern Uganda. Through these case studies, the authors illuminate how the broader financialization of society is intimately intertwined with both the creation of landscapes more conducive to vector-borne disease and the failure to prevent and cure such diseases throughout the world. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

How to sustain an international system of cooperation in the midst of geopolitical struggle? Can the international economic and legal system survive today's fractured geopolitics? Democracies are facing a drawn-out contest with authoritarian states that is entangling much of public policy with global security issues. In Global Discord: Values and Power in a Fractured World Order (Princeton University Press, 2024), Paul Tucker lays out principles for a sustainable system of international cooperation, showing how democracies can deal with China and other illiberal states without sacrificing their deepest political values. Drawing on three decades as a central banker and regulator, Tucker applies these principles to the international monetary order, including the role of the U.S. dollar, trade and investment regimes, and the financial system. Combining history, economics, and political and legal philosophy, Tucker offers a new account of international relations. Rejecting intellectual traditions that go back to Hobbes, Kant, and Grotius, and deploying instead ideas from David Hume, Bernard Williams, and modern mechanism-design economists, Tucker describes a new kind of political realism that emphasizes power and interests without sidelining morality. Incentives must be aligned with values if institutions are to endure. The connecting tissue for a system of international cooperation, he writes, should be legitimacy, creating a world of concentric circles in which we cooperate more with those with whom we share the most and whom we fear the least. Paul Tucker is a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and the author of Unelected Power (Princeton). He is a former central banker and regulator at the Bank of England, and a former director at Basel's Bank for International Settlements, where he chaired some of the groups designing reforms of the international financial system after the Global Financial Crisis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Tax havens in offshore lands like Switzerland, the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas were once considered a rarity, the preserve of the super-rich. Today, they are big business available to the masses. Their goal? To avoid any form of accountability. Own nothing. Possess everything. Be answerable to no one. Where are these tax havens? What forms can they take? What future lies in store for them, and why should we care? An Anatomy of Tax Havens: Europe, the Caribbean and the United States of America (de Gruyter, 2023) answers these questions, and more, in the first comparative study in one volume of European, Caribbean and United States tax havens. It examines their simple origin to the extreme forms some take today, delving into the murky subculture that has deliberately made them impenetrably obscure. Uniquely, it combines detailed technical expertise (regulatory regimes, financial crime, legal and equitable structuring) with an analysis of their impact on domestic and global political, economic, environmental and social concerns. An Anatomy of Tax Havens is a fascinating, informative read for a broad readership; from legal, accountancy and tax practitioners to compliance regulators, law enforcement agencies, and students and researchers interested in business studies, taxation, and crime. Paul R. Beckett is a Lawyer and Academic, specializing in company, commercial and trust law; banking and fund management; cryptocurrencies and the blockchain. He practices on the Isle of Man. 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

Inflation is back, and its impact can be felt everywhere, from the grocery store to the mortgage market to the results of elections around the world. What's more, tariffs and trade wars threaten to accelerate inflation again. Yet the conventional wisdom about inflation is stuck in the past. Since the 1970s, there has only really been one playbook for fighting inflation: raise interest rates, thereby creating unemployment and a recession, which will lower prices. But this simple story hides a multitude of beliefs about why prices go up and how policymakers can wrestle them back down, beliefs that are often wrong, damaging, and have little empirical basis. Leading political economists Mark Blyth and Nicolò Fraccaroli reveal why inflation really happens, challenge how we think about it, and argue for fresh approaches to combat it. With accessible and engaging commentary, and a good dose of humor, Blyth and Fraccaroli bring the complexities of economic policy and inflation indices down to earth. Policymakers around the world may have pulled off a so-called "soft landing," but Inflation warns they must update their thinking. Now tariffs, climate shocks, demographic change, geopolitical tensions, and politicians promising to upend the global order are all combining to create a more inflationary future, making a new paradigm for understanding inflation urgently necessary. Astute, timely, and engaging, Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the forces shaping our economy and politics. Mark Blyth is a political economist whose research focuses upon how uncertainty and randomness impact complex systems, particularly economic systems, and why people continue to believe stupid economic ideas despite buckets of evidence to the contrary. He is the author of several books, including Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (Oxford University Press 2013, and The Future of the Euro (with Matthias Matthijs) (Oxford University Press 2015). Sidney Michelini is a post-doctoral researcher working on Ecology, Climate, and Violence at the Peace Research Institute of Frankfurt (PRIF). Book Recomendations: The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph by Albert O. Hirschman The Rhetoric of Reaction by Albert O. Hirschman Disorder: Hard Times in the Twenty-First Century by Helen Thompson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Crisis Cycle: Challenges, Evolution, and Future of the Euro (Princeton UP, 2025) John Cochrane Luis Garicano Klaus Masuch PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2025 Launched 26 years ago, the euro was never expected to have an easy life but it wasn't supposed to be this hard. A three-year solvency crisis, a string of bailouts, and a rescue by the European Central Bank (ECB) was followed by threats of deflation, negative interest rates, massive purchases of government debt, a global pandemic, a European land war, and an inflation surge. The euro area emerged from these tests but may not survive the next without reforms during this period of relative calm. In Crisis Cycle, economists John Cochrane, Luis Garicano, and Klaus Masuch call for critical reforms to rebuild the system's incentive structure and stop the ECB's unsought mission creep. "A beautiful ship was constructed," they write. "Out at sea, it ran into severe storms. Its captain and crew patched the holes as best they could. Now though it is time to return to the dry dock and fix the ship properly". John Cochrane is a professor of economics at Stanford University, best-known for his work on asset prices and the fiscal theory of the price level. Luis Garicano is an economics professor at the London School of Economics and former vice-chair of the Renew group in the European Parliament. Klaus Masuch recently retired from the ECB, where he was head of the monetary policy strategy department and a negotiator for the "Troika" of official creditors during the sovereign-debt crisis. To see the authors' own book recommendations, click here. Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes 242.news on Substack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Hali Lee's The Big We (Zando, 2025) offers a compelling counterpoint to traditional billionaire-driven philanthropy (which she dubs "Big Phil"). Instead of logic models and donor-centric metrics, Lee champions giving circles—groups of everyday people who pool resources to support causes they value while building genuine community connections. Drawing from her experiences founding the Asian Women Giving Circle and co-creating the Donors of Color Network, Lee showcases giving circles making tangible impact: Seiji's neighborhood-focused Radfund in Brooklyn, Lily's youth philanthropy group in Arizona, and Lisa's circle that's moved over $1 million to progressive state legislative candidates. These stories illustrate how small, collective actions can drive significant change while fostering belonging and joy. The book's "Me to We to Big We" framework guides readers from personal reflection on values toward collective action and ultimately toward strengthening democracy itself. Lee argues that giving circles aren't merely funding mechanisms—they're antidotes to loneliness, laboratories for civic engagement, and bridges reconnecting us to cultural traditions of generosity. By democratizing philanthropy, these circles transform not just how we give, but how we relate to each other and engage as citizens in an increasingly fragmented society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Hosts Nina dos Santos and Owen Bennett-Jones are joined by crypto journalist Matt Binder and longtime observer of U.S. politics and policy Edward Luce to explore the staggering wealth being generated by the Trump family's crypto empire. We also hear from Sergei Sergienko, a crypto entrepreneur who has made and lost hundreds of millions in the crypto markets. Sergei has also faced down gangsters who tried to extort his wealth—an attack that mirrors a recent spate of kidnappings and abductions of crypto players in Paris. Join us for a modern tale of global grift that is changing how the American presidency can function and do deals on the world stage. Guests Matt Binder – Journalist and host of the Scam Economy podcast Edward Luce – U.S. national editor and columnist at the Financial Times. His forthcoming biography of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Zbig: The Life of Zbig Brzezinski, America's Great Power Prophet, will be published in May 2025 by Simon & Schuster (U.S.) and Bloomsbury (U.K.). Sergei Sergienko – CEO at Chrono.tech; Australian entrepreneur and leading blockchain expert Producer: Pearse LynchExecutive Producer: Lucinda Knight Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Today I interviewed Charles Hecker about Zero Sum. The Arc of International Business in Russia (Oxford UP, 2025). Hecker, a journalist and business consultant, speaks with dozens of Western business executives, bankers, and financiers who reaped immense profits for themselves and their companies in the Russian market, which suddenly opened to foreigners after decades of state planning and economic autarky. These “riskophile” Westerners recall the early post-Soviet Russia as an unchartered territory where business “had a body count” and “violence was cheap, routine and almost casual”. In the 2000s Russia, now stabilized by Putin, offered unparalleled opportunities for those who had learnt to navigate its murky, gray environment. While some expressed concern over the unchallenged primacy of the supreme ruler presiding over arbitrary redistribution of property in favor of his cronies and the rapid consolidation of state ownership, the squeamish were far outnumbered by the opportunistic. Following Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the subsequent imposition of sweeping Western sanctions forced most Westerners to flee, often selling their companies for a fraction of their value and, in some cases, even giving it for free to their Russian partners. Looking back some regret “looking the other way” at the rampant corruption and lawlessness, while others admit that enrichment in Russia was always destined to be short-lived. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

The Chinese Communist Party's complex and contradictory embrace of capitalism has played a pivotal role in shaping China's economic reforms since the late 1970s. The Bird and the Cage: China's Economic Contradictions (Palgrave MacMillan, 2025) explores the persistent tensions between state control and market forces in China. It shows how these tensions provide a framework to understand Xi Jinping's recent efforts to tighten control over the Chinese economy. It also evaluates the broader implications of these policies for China's economic trajectory and its global trade relationships. Nicholas Borst is vice president and director of China research at Seafarer Capital Partners, and a member of the seventh cohort of the Public Intellectuals Program of the National Committee on US-China Relations. Prior to joining Seafarer, he was a senior analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco covering financial and economic developments in Greater China. Previously, Mr. Borst was the China program manager and a research associate at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He also worked as an analyst at the World Bank, reviewing Chinese overseas investment projects. He was the founder and editor of the Peterson Institute's China Economic Watch blog, the co-founder of the Federal Reserve's Pacific Exchanges blog and podcast, and the founder of Seafarer's Prevailing Winds blog. His research and commentary have been featured in the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Bloomberg, The Wire China, and South China Morning Post. He has testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on two occasions. Mr. Borst holds a B.A. in political science and international studies from the University of Arizona. He holds a certificate in Chinese studies from The Johns Hopkins University – Nanjing University Center and a master's degree in international relations and economics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He is a CFA charterholder and a member of the CFA Institute. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Donald Trump is putting liberal democracy through its greatest test in 80 years.  None of it is original. His style of rule is straight from the democratic backsliders' playbook. To secure long-term power rather than short-term office, rulers must take over the institutions that check and balance majority rule and bend them to their will. Trump has tamed Congress and inserted his people into the Supreme Court, law enforcement, intelligence, and competition regulation but - to his great frustration - the Federal Reserve is holding out. It was the same story in Hungary after Viktor Orbán returned to the premiership in 2010. Bound by EU law and the mandates of the governor and his deputies, Orbán had to wait three years to break the national bank. One of those deputy governors, Júlia Király, experienced state capture from the inside and resigned with a public protest at the loss of institutional independence. Now an associate professor of finance and monetary economics at the International Business School in Budapest, she began her career under socialism at the statistics and planning offices. As deputy governor, she was part of the team that managed the Hungarian economy through the post-2007 financial crisis – an experience she chronicles in Hungary and Other Emerging EU Countries in the Financial Storm: From Minor Turbulences to a Global Hurricane (Springer, 2020). Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes and podcasts at www.242.news on Substack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

More than any one institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest rates are set by a committee, for almost a century, the Fed's philosophy and operational approach have been moulded by one person: the Chair of the Board of Governors. In the first series of The Chair, Tim Gwynn Jones talked to authors of books about the Fed's foundational Chairs – Marriner Eccles, Bill Martin, Arthur Burns, and Paul Volcker. In this second series, he covers the people who chaired the Fed through the post-1990 period of financialisation, globalisation, and – perhaps today – deglobalisation. This eighth and final episode covers the life and times of the current chair, Jerome ("Jay") Powell - the technocratic lawyer-turned-banker who managed the global economy through two unprecedented disasters: the Covid pandemic and Donald Trump's protectionist trade policies. As the episodes about Martin, Burns, and Volcker all attest, Powell isn't the first chairman to face political blowback. But he is the first to be publicly denounced as “Mr Too Late” and a “major loser” by a president intent on removing him from office before his term ends in mid-2026. To discuss Powell, Tim is joined by Nick Timiraos, author of Trillion Dollar Triage: How Jay Powell and the Fed Battled a President and a Pandemic and Prevented Economic Disaster (Little, Brown, 2022). “If people think you're not going to act in the country's best interest, that's bad for the Fed,” he says. “The next time the Fed decides it needs to do something that actually is ‘exigent and unusual', people will say: ‘Well, wait a minute, the last time you did this, we thought you were a toady for the Democrats or a toady for the Republicans. We don't think you're a straight shooter. We're not going to let you raise interest rates by 25 basis points. We're not going to give you money to backstop your purchases of corporate credit'. Those are the kind of medium and long term risks from a fight with the White House. I think, for Powell, the worst outcome is that people don't think you have an independent central bank anymore. Your monetary policy won't be credible. Why not just roll that thing into the Treasury Department if that's what you're going to do?” Since 2017, Nick Timiraos has been the chief economics correspondent at The Wall Street Journal and has developed an unrivalled reputation as the "Fed whisperer". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

More than any other single institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest rates are set by a committee, for almost a century, the Fed's philosophy and operational approach have been moulded by one person: the Chair of the Board of Governors. In the first series of The Chair, Tim Gwynn Jones talked to authors of books about the Fed's foundational Chairs – Marriner Eccles, Bill Martin, Arthur Burns, and Paul Volcker. In this second series, he covers the people who chaired the Fed through the post-1990 period of financialisation, globalisation, and – perhaps today – deglobalisation. The third episode of the second series covers Janet Yellen – not only the first woman to become Fed Chair but the first person of either sex to lead the Fed, the Treasury, and the Council of Economic Advisors. To discuss Ben Bernanke's successor, Tim is joined by Jon Hilsenrath, author of Yellen: The Trailblazing Economist Who Navigated an Era of Upheaval (Harper Collins, 2022). “Bernanke was a consensus builder,” says Hilsenrath. “He wasn't the kind of guy who was going to push people on a personal level out of their comfort zones … Yellen was a bit of a bulldog there, but she was also a bulldog with the Fed staff. I mean, she had a view that the world was on fire and that they, you know, and that they had to be moving like people putting out a fire”. In 2023, Hilsenrath left the Wall Street Journal after a 26-year career during which he developed a market reputation as a pre-eminent Fed-watcher. He's still watching the Fed but now for his own advisory firm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

More than any other single institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest rates are set by a committee, for almost a century, the Fed's philosophy and operational approach have been moulded by one person: the Chair of the Board of Governors. In the first series of The Chair, Tim Gwynn Jones talked to authors of books about the Fed's foundational Chairs – Marriner Eccles, Bill Martin, Arthur Burns, and Paul Volcker. In this second series, he covers the people who chaired the Fed through the post-1990 period of financialisation, globalisation, and – perhaps today – deglobalisation. Episode two of the second series covers the life and crisis-era times of Ben Bernanke, the man who filled Alan Greenspan's big shoes and ran the Fed from 2006 to 2014. A shy but world-renowned monetary economist and historian of the Great Depression, Bernanke was left holding the proverbial bomb when the financial system came close to collapse in 2008. To discuss Bernanke, Tim is joined by David Wessel, author of In FED We Trust: Ben Bernanke's War on the Great Panic (Crown, 2010). “It wasn't obvious when he was appointed to the Fed in 2006 that having somebody who had spent their life studying the Great Depression would be well equipped to be Alan Greenspan's successor,” says Wessel. “I have sometimes said it was a like being a paleontologist. It's very nice that you know a lot about dinosaurs, but what use is that to us today until one day a Stegosaurus appears on the horizon. And it was remarkable good fortune for the country and the world that there was a guy who happened to have studied all the mistakes that the Fed made in the 1920s and the 1930s in a position to do something about it when a situation, not all that dissimilar, appears both to his surprise and to almost everybody else's”. Wessel is two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who now runs the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution. For 30 years, he worked at the Wall Street Journal - reporting mostly from Washington and covering economics and the Fed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

More than any other single institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest rates are set by a committee, for almost a century, the Fed's philosophy and operational approach have been moulded by one person: the Chair of the Board of Governors. In the first series of The Chair, Tim Gwynn Jones talked to authors of books about the Fed's foundational Chairs – Marriner Eccles, Bill Martin, Arthur Burns, and Paul Volcker. In this second series, he covers the people who chaired the Fed through the post-1990 period of financialisation, globalisation, and – perhaps today – deglobalisation. The first episode of the second series explores Alan Greenspan, the chairman who followed Paul Volcker and ran the Fed from 1987 until 2006. Once bestowed with “Maestro” status, Greenspan – who turns 100 in March 2026 – has seen his reputation deflate in the wake of the post-2008 financial crisis. To discuss the fallen Maestro, Tim is joined by Sebastian Mallaby, author of The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan (Bloomsbury, 2016). “Greenspan was the man who knew,” says Mallaby. “He was the man who knew that bubbles were extremely destructive, and yet he was not the man who acted against those bubbles. So, whilst he was great on inflation and on stabilising the price of eggs, he was not good on asset-price inflation or stabilising the price of nest eggs”. A former journalist at The Economist and the Washington Post, Mallaby is the prize-winning author of The World's Banker – a portrait of the World Bank under James Wolfensohn – and More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite. He is now the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

One of the most distinctive aspects of global capitalism in the last half century or so has been the increased role of the financial sector in the global economy, especially in the advanced industrial economies of the Global North. The profitability and market capitalization of firms in the financial sector have increased immensely, firms that originated in the real economy have diversified into financial activities, cross-border financial flows have limited the policy autonomy of national governments, and the value of financial assets has driven increasing global inequality. How did the financial sector come to occupy such an important position in the global economy? My guest today, the political economist Jack Copley, addresses this question by going back to the archives to investigate why the British government implemented key reforms associated with financial liberalization during the 1970s and 1980s. In Governing Financialization: The Tangled Politics of Financial Liberalization in Britain (Oxford UP, 2022), he shows that financialization did not result from some grand ideologically-driven policy agenda, nor did it result from the actions of far-sighted omnipotent state managers automatically adjusting the course of the British economy in the face of increased manufacturing competition. Rather, he argues that financial liberalization in the UK resulted from policymakers attempting to muddle through from one crisis to the next by balancing competing imperatives to enhance the country's competitive position in the global economy while maintaining social and political order domestically. Short-term efforts to put out economic fires drove financial liberalization, rather than grand ideological designs or automatic adjustment to changing circumstances. Jack Copley is an assistant professor in international political economy at Durham University in the UK. 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 workings of financial markets to our response to the ecological crisis, economic theory shapes the world. But where do these ideas come from? Ricardo's Dream: How Economists Forgot the Real World and Led Us Astray (Bristol University Press, 2024) tells the fascinating story of David Ricardo, Adam Smith's only real rival as the ‘founder of economics'. The wealthiest stock trader of his day, Ricardo introduced the study of abstract models to economics. He also developed the theory of trade that underpinned globalization and hides, behind its mathematical facade, a history of power, empire, and slavery. Brimming with fresh ideas and stories, Ricardo's Dream shows how too many economists, from Ricardo's day to our own, have turned away from observing the real world and led us astray. Nat Dyer is a writer and researcher specialising in global political economy. He is a Fellow of the Schumacher Institute and the Royal Society of Arts. He has worked for Global Witness and for Promoting Economic Pluralism and his stories have been reported on by the BBC, the New York Times and Bloomberg 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

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