April 15, 2020
Marcelo de Castro Filho & Susan Silbey, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
At the core of Lev Menand’s and Bill Maurer’s contributions to this roundtable lie one important conclusion
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M. de Castro Cunha Filho & S. Silbey, What lies behind the apparent trust in cryptocurrencies?”
April 10, 2020
Carolyn Sissoko, University of the West of England
Coronavirus and the immense economic costs associated with repressing its growth has provoked a debate over how to distribute those costs.
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C. Sissoko, The Problem with Shareholder Bailouts isn’t Moral Hazard, but Undermining State Capacity”
April 9, 2020
John Haskell, The University of Manchester
Nathan Tankus, The Modern Money Network
Off the radar in academic, professional and public experience until the early to mid-2000s, virtual currencies are a hot topic
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J. Haskell & N. Tankus, Virtual Currency (in the Shadows of the Money Markets)”
March 31, 2020
J.S. Nelson, Villanova University
What are cryptocurrencies: securities, commodities, or another form of established currency – a non-sovereign fiat currency?
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J.S. Nelson, The Case for Cryptocurrencies as a New Category of Regulated Non-Sovereign Fiat Currency”
April 1, 2020
Saule T. Omarova, Cornell Law School
The COVID-19 crisis is unlike any other we’ve seen so far.
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S. Omarova, Crises, Bailouts, and the Case for a National Investment Authority”
Benjamin Geva, Osgoode Hall Law School of York University
An internal report submitted in March to the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), presents an initial analysis of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
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Central Bank Digital Currencies: The New Era of Modern-day Banking”
Dirk Niepelt, University of Bern
Central banks already issue digital money, but only to a select group of financial institutions.
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Digital money and central bank digital currency: An executive summary for policymakers”
March 31, 2020
Jens van ‘t Klooster, KU Leuven and University of Amsterdam
Commentators have raised various concerns over provisions in the $2 trillion US stimulus bill that assign $454
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J. van ‘t Klooster, Why the US Congress Gives Dollars to the Fed”
In this Primer, we at Justmoney.org provide a user-friendly, step-by-step explanation of the Paycheck Protection Loan Program enacted last week as part of the CARES Act (Mar. 27, 2020).
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Primer on the CARES Act SBA Payment Protection Loan Program”
Erik Gerding and Nadav Orian Peer
Financial Aspects of the COVID Crisis was a community teach-in in CU Law, held online on March 24, 2020.
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Financial Aspects of the COVID Crisis”
March 27, 2020
Carolyn Sissoko, University of the West of England
A recurring theme in the papers that I have written is that asset price instability is endemic in a system of collateralized lending based on repurchase agreements
More “Money in the Time of Coronavirus
C. Sissoko, A Fire Sale in the US Treasury Market: What the Coronavirus Crisis Teaches us About the Fundamental Instability of our Current Financial Structure”
March 25, 2020
Robert Hockett, Cornell Law School
On March 23rd House Democrats did something I and many others have been advocating for some time
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R. Hockett, The Democratic Digital Dollar: A ‘Treasury Direct’ Option”
March 22, 2020
James McAndrews, TNB USA Inc. and Wharton Financial Institutions Center
One failure makes many, wrote Bagehot,
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J. McAndrews, Derivative Failures”
March 20, 2020
Katharina Pistor, Columbia Law School
Our money system revolves around debt.
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K. Pistor, The Case for Free Money (a real Libra)”
Recall this Book Podcast Talks with Christine Desan
This is the first of several RTB episodes about the history of money.
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[Recall This Buck I]: Chris Desan on Making Money”
March 19, 2020
Leah Downey, Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University
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The Monetary/Fiscal Divide is Still Getting in Our Way”
Adair Turner and Paul Tucker
As the coronavirus pandemic spreads, two economics heavyweights debate the proposition. Replies will be updated in real time.
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Are Central Banks Impotent?”
March 18, 2020
Elham Saeidinezhad, Department of Economics at UCLA
The coronavirus crisis has sparked different policy responses from different countries. The common thread
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E. Saeidinezhad, Is the Monetary System as Systemic and International as the Coronavirus?”
March 17, 2020
Dan Awrey, Cornell Law School
The global pandemic unleashed by the coronavirus has inadvertently shone a spotlight on the design of some of our most important monetary institutions.
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D. Awrey, Here We Go Again? Not Really”
March 16, 2020
Nadav Orian Peer, Colorado Law
“It was inevitable: the scent of bitter [money markets] always reminded him of the fate of unrequited [convergence trades].”
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N. Orian Peer, Repo in the Time of Corona”
March 16, 2020
Jamee K. Moudud, Professor of Economics, Sarah Lawrence College, and Board Member, Association for the Promotion of Political Economy and the Law (APPEAL)
In considering the recent stock market crash the casual observer cannot help but be struck by the way
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J. K. Moudud, Beyond Pathogenic Politics”
March 15, 2020
James, McAndrews, TNB USA Inc. and Wharton Financial Institutions Center
What principles should guide our government’s responses to the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic?
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J. McAndrews, Economic and Financial Responses to the Coronavirus”
March 12, 2020
Christine Desan, Harvard Law School
An iconic article published by Douglass North and Barry Weingast in 1989 identified the growth of banking
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C. Desan, The Power of Paradigms in Histories of Economic Development”
March 11, 2020
Joseph Sommer
Whenever I hear about “virtual currency,” I check my wallet, or sometimes reach for my revolver.
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J. Sommer, How is Private Money Possible?”
Edited by Andrés Bernal
This special issue of Liminalities invites cohosts of the Money on the Left Podcast
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Liminalities, Vol. 15, Issue 3: Money on the Left”
March 5, 2020
Sir Paul Tucker, Harvard Kennedy School
It has been orthodoxy for as long as I can remember that bank deposits are created by bank lending.
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P. Tucker, Thinking about whether and why money matters is more important than debates about “views” on banking intermediation”
Authors: Nick Bernards & Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn
Amid escalating claims about the promises and perils of emergent financial technologies (fintech), critical investigation.
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Understanding technological change in global finance through infrastructures:”
March 4, 2020
Lana Swartz, University of Virginia
In 2010, the satirical newspaper the Onion ran a story with the headline, “U.S. Economy Grinds to Halt as Nation Realizes Money Just a Symbolic,
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L. Swartz, Starbucks, Libra, and the Boring Future of Money”
Author: Katharina Pistor
In this testimony before Congress' Committee on Financial Services, Katharina Pistor examines Facebook’s proposed global cryptocurrency, Libra.
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Senate Testimony of Katharina Pistor, Examining Facebook’s Proposed Cryptocurrency and Its Impact on Consumers, Investors, and the American Financial System”
Author: Robert Hockett
Many national and subnational units of government see a need for more inclusive money, payment, and retail banking systems for the capture, storage, and transfer of spendable value among their constituents.
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The Democratic Digital Dollar: A Digital Savings & Payments Platform for Fully Inclusive State, Local, and National Money & Banking Systems”
Author: Elham Saeidinezhad
It has long been tempting for economists to imagine “the economy” as a giant machine for producing and distributing “value.”
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Promises All the Way Down: A Primer on the Money View”
February 26, 2020
Stephen A. Marglin, Harvard University
This is a curious debate on which much seems to turn on “the stroke of a pen.”
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S. Marglin, What Do Banks Do?”
February 26, 2020
Hilary J. Allen, American University Washington College of Law
Money serves three important functions. It acts as a unit of account (meaning that it can be used to measure the value of goods and services)
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H. Allen, Cryptocurrencies as Privately-Issued Moneys”
Author: Lev Menand
Administrative agencies typically operate at arm’s length from the institutions they regulate, making rules and then enforcing them after the fact.
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The Monetary Basis of Bank Supervision”
Author: Dan Awrey
Money is, always and everywhere, a legal phenomenon. In the United States, the vast majority of the money supply consists of monetary liabilities
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Bad Money”
February 18, 2020
Daniel K. Tarullo, Harvard Law School
To be honest, I have always been a bit bemused by the longstanding theoretical debate as to whether banks are best understood as money creators or financial intermediaries.
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D. Tarullo, Focusing on Risk”
Authors: Sean Vanatta and Peter Conti-Brown
The banking crises of 1930-1933 created the Great Depression and with it the momentum that remade American politics
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Bank Supervision, the Great Depression, and the Creation of the New Deal”
Our aim is to encourage discussion, debate, and scholarship on money’s design and its reform towards a world that is as just as it is (economically) productive. (read more)
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February 20, 2020
Bill Maurer, University of California, Irvine
I picked up a copy of the Financial Times in the Munich airport on my way home from keynoting the Bundesbank’s biannual International Cash Conference.
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B. Maurer, Money at the Zero Lower Bound”
February 14, 2020
Lev Menand, Columbia Law School
Eleven years ago an unknown person—or group of people—going by the name Satoshi Nakamoto launched Bitcoin
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L. Menand, Regulate Virtual Currencies as Currency”
Author: Barry Eichengreen
The traditional way of starting an essay on the history of capitalism is by not defining the term.
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Financial History, Historical Analysis, and the New History of Finance Capital”
Author: David M. P. Freund
The U.S. government transformed American finance between 1913 and 1935 by assuming extraordinary new powers over the banking sector and the money supply. And the government’s actions were reliably controversial. Beginning soon after the Federal Reserve began operations and lasting through the reforms that restructured the institution during the New Deal, critics warned that federal overreach in financial markets posed an existential threat to the free-enterprise system.
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State Building for a Free Market: The Great Depression and the Rise of Monetary Orthodoxy”
Author: Nuno Palma
Classic accounts of the English industrial revolution present a long period of stagnation followed by a fast take-off. However, recent findings of slow but steady per capita economic growth suggest that this is a historically inaccurate portrait of early modern England. This growth pattern was in part driven by specialization and structural change accompanied by an increase in market participation at both the intensive and extensive levels. These, I argue, were supported by the gradual increase in money supply made possible by the importation of precious metals from America. They enabled a substantial increase in the monetization and liquidity levels of the economy, hence decreasing transaction costs, increasing market thickness, changing the relative incentive for participating in the market and allowing agglomeration economies to arise. By making trade with Asia possible, precious metals also induced demand for new desirable goods, which in turn encouraged market participation. Finally, the increased monetization and market participation made tax collection easier. This helped the government to build up fiscal capacity and as a consequence to provide for public goods. The structural change and increased market participation that ensued paved the way for modernization.
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Money and modernization in early modern England”
Author: Joan DeJean
The year 2019 marks a milestone in the history of finance and of capitalism: the three hundredth anniversary of John Law's spectacular take-over of France's economy. Between December 1718 and December 1719, Law established the first national bank in French history, the Banque Royale or Royal Bank, as well as Paris' original stock exchange, on the rue Quincampoix. At the same time, Philippe d'Orléans, the Regent governing France during Louis XV's minority, fused several older trading companies in order to create a giant conglomerate known as the Indies Company that enjoyed an absolute monopoly over the country's overseas trade. The Regent gave Law control first over the newly powerful Indies Company, then over the Royal Mint, and in the end over the regulation of all government finance and expenditure. Finally, also in 1719, Law introduced the French to two financial instruments with which they had had no prior experience: paper money and publicly traded stock in the form of shares in the new Indies Company. One man controlled the most important economy in Europe.
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John Law’s Capitalist Violence”
Author: Daniela Gabor
In its capacity as debt issuer, the state has played a growing role in financial life over the last 30 years. To examine this role and connect it to shadow banking, the paper develops the concept of the ‘repo trinity’, which…
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The (impossible) repo trinity: the political economy of repo markets”
Author: Marc Flandreau
A NEW ECONOMIC HISTORY is emerging. It needs a new journal. Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics finds its roots in the resurgence of interest for the economic past that has been a characteristic feature of …
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Border Crossing”
Author: Saule T. Omarova
This Article analyzes the principal themes in the newly reinvigorated public debate on the role of ethical norms and cultural factors in financial markets and identifies its key conceptual and normative limitations.…
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Ethical Finance as a Systemic Challenge: Risk, Culture, and Structure”
Author: Iain Frame
This article explores a dilemma at the centre of the monetary order: how to counter inflation eroding the value of money and simultaneously allow bank‐created credit to meet the needs of an expanding economy. Building on…
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Between the ‘Bank Screw’ and ‘Affording Assistance’: Rules, Standards and the Bank Charter Act of 1844”
Author: Michael Svedman
The proposal by Italy’s Lega Norda (or League) political party to introduce a currency-like instrument called the mini-BOT that would circulate alongside the euro has generated ...
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Italy’s mini-BOT Proposal”