Articles
Pot look
Problems with pensions exhibit the same concerns that drive our inability to tackle the environmental crisis and other great societal issues. We need to recognise uncomfortable truths and meaningfully support
Saint Mark’s square roots
An excerpt from The Venetian Files – a novel by Izaias Almada and Matheus Graselli. September 12-14, 2008: New York City, USA Hank Paulson managed to get Alistair Darling on
Financing a just transition
Nick Robins looks at why investors need to connect climate action with social justice. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), extra investment in clean energy could save the
Home Truths
Government spending that is not investment is like continual partying and drinking. Tanweer Ali tells how austerity was sold as common sense. In the early days of David Cameron’s coalition
You don’t count
Opaque reporting in company accounts is not in the public interest says Richard Murphy. The failings of accounting have been afforded much attention of late. This has been actively appropriate.
Money for nothing and the risks for free
Limited liability is at the nub of it all. Paul Frijters points the finger. Roman men engaged in commerce had a problem: Roman law did not recognise limits to the
The Nobel Bailout
Nat Dyer tells the story of how two Nobel Prize winners almost brought down the world’s financial markets by putting their “rocket science” finance theory into practice. Sounds like a
Fiscal fizz is less sweet
One year on, Ben Reynolds explores the impact of the high-profile “sugar tax”, and where it might go in future. I remember the moment, when two years into running a
Many hands
How can we turn around the world’s financial institutions so that their creation of money serves to construct a new ecological civilisation, rather than destroys our current civilization through the
Greece bears gifts
The European Union has lessons to learn from one of its least adept members writes Alex Tziamalis. While the UK is engulfed by Brexit – a battle for the strategic direction
A sense of insecurity
The growing push for using securitisation markets for development finance is fraught with multiple dangers ahead. Rick Rowden sounds a warning. The international development finance club has been increasingly experimenting with various types
Re-designing money
John Wood suggests that money should be re-designed as local maps of relations, rather than as a universal register of quantities and things. When someone tells you not to re-invent
What economic reform thinking might have looked like if we’d bothered to do it.
Here I am back… in the Treasury like a recurring decimal – but with one great difference. In 1918 most people’s only idea was to get back to pre-1914. No
Victorian Values
Banks are scrabbling to find some trust. Robert Mochrie explains how they might look to the distant past. The nature of banking transactions demonstrates the need for trust between the
What’s the impact of impact investing?
The roles of pay-by-result within public policy Source: Addarii et al., Funding Social Innovation (forthcoming) Filippo Addarii, Alexander Shapiro and Marco Sebastianelli offer a short introduction to the ambition,
By so many, to so few
In the centennial year of the RAF, Churchill’s words attesting to the valiance of Britain’s fighter pilots have a less chest-swelling relevance to wealth in the UK. Tom Burgess writes
Out of the shadows
How did the central banks find themselves holding the torch that keeps the shadow banks in existence? Leon Wansleben throws some light. You are likely to read this piece at
What do we need more of?
Our economic system still fails to allocate enough funds to strategic investments such as infrastructure, industry and education. Alexander Tziamalis tells how our times call for important economic and policy
Long after the Brothers, it still looks grim
Where there’s a bail out there’s a way. Peter Manley takes a look back. The so-called brain drain is something of a long-established right of passage for young adults in
A triumph of finance over democracy
The rolling Back of Dodd-Frank and other tales of twists by Rick Rowden. In May 2018, the US watered down some of the major financial sector regulations it had adopted
The human touch
There is a world of innovation and entrepreneurism where the bottom line is the last thing that matters. René Kemp tells. We live in a world of marketisation with its
Putting Stakeholders at the Centre
If the talk of a move from a shareholder economy to a stakeholder economy is to be more than just lip service, businesses need to engage meaningfully with a range
Austerity stripped bare
The tightened belt is still in fashion but it’s a style that is transparently thin says Geoff Tily. For years the logic of austerity has governed UK economic policy. In
Property in Ireland: another bridge too far
The bust after the 2007 property price boom in Ireland has left its scars. As a second bubble is swelling Peter Manley warns that people shouldn’t lose out again to
Don’t bring the house down
Real estate is a load bearing part of the UK economy. Alexander Tziamalis warns how cracks are appearing. London real estate is in a downward spiral, for the first time
Behaviour is good
How do you measure it? Can you turn it around? ‘How?’ is becoming as important a question as how much? in investors’ regulators’ and customers’ appraisals of businesses. Deborah Hawkes
Volcanic Rock: are we prepared for the next eruption?
Ten years ago Northern Rock disappeared in a cloud of smoke and mirror practices, opacity and mistrust. Richard Murphy asks, what have we learnt for the next time? It is
The attack on Dodd-Frank
Rick Rowden lays out how Trump, Wall Street and the Republicans in Congress are committed to dismantling financial regulation in the US. While much of the Trump administration’s political agenda
Regulating behaviour: time off for good conduct?
The principles underpinning behavioural economics have been attracting legislators seeking to rein in the excesses of the financial sector. Are they motivated by saving face, political gain or doing right
London is too far from Singapore
The UK government’s post Brexit aspiration for the City to challenge Singapore’s growth in offshore finance is flawed and ill-matched to growing global hostility to tax havens. John Christensen explains.
Interviews
Theoretically speaking
Randy Wray was one of the finalists for our #NotTheNobel prize in October and is one of the world’s leading advocates of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). It might sound like
A model agent
Mainstream economics’ failure to predict the 2008 crash undermined the profession’s public credibility. There’s a new game in town that financial risk guru, Rick Bookstaber, has faith in. He shares
Decisions, Decisions
Lamy: the possibilities of digital simulation struck “a visceral chord.” Artificial intelligence could guide decisions from the political to the personal, if people would seize the opportunities on offer. The Mint talks to Dahlia Lamy, who says the
The only way is ethics
Pettifor: “Private authority can’t fully be trusted to uphold contracts.” Trust and compliance with regulation are not familiar virtues in the world of global finance according to Ann Pettifor. She
Three Years and Counting
Bête noir to established economists Steve Keen tells the Mint why Brexit ended a stupid policy but the government line on trade agreements is nonsense and an economic zombie apocalypse
News
Columns
The Teller’s Tale
John Kay in an interview last year for The Mint, singled out Handelsbanken as a ray of hope in the banking world. According to Kay, it “had grown quite rapidly
Credit Where Credit’s Due
Who gets to borrow at a fair rate is a pernicious inequality. It’s funny how, despite overt concerns, affluent people always find ways to keep the poor apart from them:
The children are the future
Babysitting comes with great responsibility. Lehman. I can’t seem to escape the constant harking on the significance of the failure of Lehman. There is even a play about the Lehman
Real Gone Cat
What state are we in? Like the cat in Schrödinger’s famous quantum thought experiment we can’t know whether we are dead or alive as we await the writing of definitive
So what does the failure of Lehmans mean to you?
For me, it marked the end of an exciting and creative period which really started with the Rio Summit in 1992. During this period there was increasing space within the
Whoops apocalypse: analysis or parody? Discuss
Who knew that the flap of a cardboard box full of desk contents could herald a hurricane that would tear through global politics. Frances Coppola follows the money. “Do you
And so… to the cleaners. An invitation to lunch all gets a bit messy.
Last week I had a lunch date. This is not something I get to have much these days. One of my postgraduate students, Crispin McDonal, contacted me through my university.
When will they ever learn?
Can we avoid financial instability or has our human nature evolved in such a way that they are inevitable? Clearly Gordon Brown’s endless pronouncements of the end of ‘Boom and
Sinking in the klepto-professional reign
Capitalism needs to heal. But mounting greed among the professional classes is choking our post-crash recovery. In the run-up to the 2008 crisis, financial speculation was large, dominant and increasingly
A bullet in the chamber of the Commons
We seem to be playing a game of political Russian roulette in UK. Place your cross – pull the trigger for a new leader – see what happens. Labour’s pseudo
Enlightened liberal seeks similar
Can liberals actually fool all the people all the time? The Outsider writes. Everybody wants to be cool. And liberal sounds like liberation which conjures up freedom and the will
Books
Sabotage: The Business of Finance
From the Publisher: Financial malpractice, we’re told, is an aberration: the actions of a few bad apples deviating from the norms of a market-governed process and gaming the system. In
A World Without Work
From the Publisher: New technologies have always provoked panic about workers being replaced by machines. In the past, such fears have been misplaced, and many economists maintain that they remain
Mutant Neoliberalism
From the Publisher: Tales of neoliberalism’s death are serially overstated. Following the financial crisis of 2008, neoliberalism was proclaimed a “zombie,” a disgraced ideology that staggered on like an undead
Trading for Good- Christian Felber
Trade is the lifeblood of the global economy, but few would consider it a social good. Instead, our views on trade have polarized between two extremes: ‘free trade’ ideologues who
Why Not Default?: The Political Economy of Sovereign Debt
From Publisher: The European debt crisis has rekindled long-standing debates about the power of finance and the fraught relationship between capitalism and democracy in a globalized world. Why Not Default?
The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay
From Publisher: America’s runaway inequality has an engine: our unjust tax system. Even as they became fabulously wealthy, the ultra-rich have had their taxes collapse to levels last seen in
Taking the Floor: Models, Morals, and Management in a Wall Street Trading Room by Daniel Beunza
From Publisher: Debates about financial reform have led to the recognition that a healthy financial system doesn’t depend solely on how it is structured—organizational culture matters as well. Based on
A Brief History of Doom – Richard Vague
Per the publisher Financial crises happen time and again in post-industrial economies—and they are extraordinarily damaging. Building on insights gleaned from many years of work in the banking industry and
The Case For People’s Quantitative Easing – Frances Coppola
In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, central banks created trillions of dollars of new money, and poured it into financial markets. ‘Quantitative Easing’ (QE) was supposed to prevent
Moneyland: Why Thieves And Crooks Now Rule The World And How To Take It Back
From ruined towns on the edge of Siberia, to Bond-villain lairs in Knightsbridge and Manhattan, something has gone wrong with the workings of the world. Once upon a time, if
Landscapes of Accumulation: Real Estate and the Neoliberal Imagination in Contemporary India
Over the past few decades, India has experienced a sudden and spectacular urban transformation. Gleaming business complexes encroach on fields and villages. Giant condominium communities offer gated security, indoor gyms,
Financializing Poverty: Labor and Risk in Indian Microfinance
Microfinance is the business of giving small, collateral-free loans to poor borrowers that are paid back in frequent intervals with interest. While these for-profit microfinance institutions (MFIs) promise social and
The Lehman Triology – More Brechtian than Brecht
Bertolt Brecht, the marxist dramatist and innovator, believed by moving away from sentimental, emotive theatre, he could allow theatre goers to think. He called this theory of distancing the audience
Short and Sweet
In remarkably few words Nick Silver gets to many points in his biting analysis of the global financial system, Finance, Society and Sustainability. It’s all good – more would be
Event Recordings
Holding Corporations to Account: towards an Economic Democracy?
We take it for granted that we get to vote in elections, but that is of course a relatively recent innovation. Universal suffrage only occurred in 1928. However most of
Basic Income and Universal Basic Services: conflicting or complementary?
Two distinct ideas are being promoted to help fix Britain’s broken social security system and badly depleted public services. The first idea – of basic income (BI) – seeks a
Is a Green New Deal the answer?
Since the idea of a Green New Deal was taken up by the newly elected, social media savvy US congress woman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez known as AOC, it has generated a
10 Years after Testimony from the Crash
The following is based on the actual testimony of real people who were affected by the Crash in different ways. It was performed as an improvised piece by Annee Blott
Applied Pluralism: The Case of Finance
There has been much recent debate also in the UK around the state of the economics profession. Prospect magazine published a piece by Howard Reed proposing that we need to
Are Crypto Currencies and Blockchain the answer or a disaster?
Blockchain has been trumped as an amazing innovation with applications everywhere to deal with the ‘trust issue’. Bitcoins, which use blockchain, have become worth 10’s of thousands of dollars each,