In the years leading up the global financial crisis, the European Union (EU) had emerged as a central actor in global financial governance, almost rivalling the United States in influence. While the USA and the EU continue to dominate financial rule setting in the post-crisis world, the context in which they do so has changed dramatically. Pre-crisis ideas about laissez-faire regulation have been discarded in favour of more interventionist ones. The G20 and the Financial Stability Board have been charged with stronger coordination of global efforts. At the same time, jurisdictions have re-emphasized the need "to get their own regulatory house in order" before committing to further global harmonization. And through banks failures and massive bail-outs, the financial sector hitherto a driving force behind the cross-border integration of finance has been reconfigured.

This book asks a straightforward question: what have these and other key post-crisis trends in global finance done to the position that the European Union occupies in it? The contributions to this book analyse the link between financial governance in the European Union and on the global level from diverse theoretical angles, and they cover the main issues that will shape the future European role on the global regulatory stage.

This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy."

This book revisits John Kenneth Galbraith's classic text The Affluent Society in the context of the background to, and causes of, the global economic crisis that erupted in 2008. Each chapter takes a major theme of Galbraith's book, distils his arguments, and then discusses to what extent they cast light on current developments, both in developed economies and in the economics discipline. The themes include: inequality, insecurity, inflation, debt, consumer behaviour, financialization, the economic role of government ('social balance'), the power of ideas, the role of power in the economy, and the nature of the good society. It considers the current problems of capitalism and the huge challenges facing democratic governments in tackling them. Written in non-technical language, this book is accessible to students of economics and the social sciences as well as to those who would have read The Affluent Society and the general reader interested in contemporary affairs and public policy.

The financial crisis that erupted in 2007 has brought the issues of the size, risk, and regulation of banks to the attention of a wide audience. It is difficult to open a broadsheet newspaper or a business magazine without being confronted with some aspect of bank behaviour, be it their risk levels, bankers' excessive rewards, the intertwining of bank and sovereign risk, or how they should be regulated to avoid problems in the future. In Europe, the recent and on-going crisis has demonstrated that the European Union (EU) was institutionally ill-prepared to manage a financial crisis, especially one involving large cross-border institutions which are systemically important to a number of countries. This book aims at integrating and synthesizing the various perspectives on the size, risk, and governance of banking as applied to the European markets, providing fresh insights and new analysis of the empirical data. The book is divided into three main sections. The first provides an overview of how the size of banking firms affects stability in the European banking sector, reviewing the quantitative empirical literature and offering new insights as to whether bank size motivates risk-taking where explicit or implicit 'too-big-to fail' policies shield bank creditors from market discipline. The next section discusses the debates relating to each of the different elements of risk in European banking, including new insights from a large dataset of European bank risk in different institutional contexts. The third section focuses on regulation, board monitoring, and opacity in European banking, employing a unique and hand collected dataset on the governance of European banks, as well as data on U.S. banks as a benchmark. The final chapter critically reviews the new insights gained from the chapters above, while offering policy implications as regards the role of size, risk and governance in European banking.

Germany's financial collapse in the summer of 1931 was one of the biggest economic catastrophes of modern history. It led to a global panic, brought down the international monetary system, and turned a worldwide recession into a prolonged depression. The crisis also contributed decisively to the rise of Hitler. Within little more than a year of its onset, the Nazis were Germany's largest political party at both the regional and national level, paving the way for Hitler's eventual seizure of power in January 1933. The origins of the collapse lay in Germany's large pile of foreign debt denominated in gold-backed currencies, which condemned the German government to cut spending, raise taxes, and lower wages in the middle of a worldwide recession. As political resistance to this policy of austerity grew, the German government began to question its debt obligations, prompting foreign investors to panic and sell their German assets. The resulting currency crisis led to the failure of the already weakened banking system and a partial sovereign default. Hitler managed to profit from the crisis because he had been the most vocal critic of the reparation regime responsible for the lion's share of German debts. As the financial system collapsed, his relentless attacks against foreign creditors and the alleged complicity of the German government resonated more than ever with the electorate. The ruling parties that were responsible for the situation lost their credibility and became defenceless in the face of his onslaught against an establishment allegedly selling the country out to her foreign creditors. Meanwhile, these creditors hesitated too long to take the wind out of Hitler's sails by offering debt relief. In this way, a financial crisis soon developed into a political catastrophe for both Europe and the world.

In 2007-2008 the world was plunged into a financial and economic crash. This book explores the multiple entwined roots of the crash, including the build-up of global economic imbalances, the explosion in the use of novel financial instruments, the mismanagement of risk, and the specific roles played by housing and debt. It reviews the evidence that on the eve of the crash all was not well and that many political and finance industry leaders ignored the dangers. The book details the key events of the crash, and explains the main amplification mechanisms. Instead of a blow-by-blow account of the numerous bank rescue programs, it uses an economics lens to dissect the logic of each category of rescue measure to make them more digestible for the lay reader. It pays particular attention to the hidden ways in which rescue measures worked and their longer-term consequences, and investigates why some approaches were favoured over others, who will ultimately bear the costs, what political constraints shaped outcomes, and to what degree new risks were created and problems only delayed. Half the book is devoted to the numerous policy struggles after the crash. It evaluates fiscal and monetary policy measures used to rescue economies, efforts to tackle unemployment, proposals for dealing with collapsing housing markets, the widespread application of austerity and the battles over long-term sovereign debt. A chapter is devoted to the handling of the Eurozone crash and policymakers struggles to fix it, and another to the continuing risks of global economic instabilities, some old and some newly-created. It reviews reforms of mortgage markets, monetary policy and banking designed to make such disasters less likely in the future. Written before, during, and in the years immediately after the crash, the book is a lively chronicle and engaging analysis of the events and thinking of these years and of the economic and political constraints that shaped responses. The book's arguments take on added authority given that the author had identified, and called attention to, key features of the crash before it happened. It is a very timely analysis of how policymakers arrived where they are now and of the many hurdles that still lie ahead. It provides a scholarly yet highly accessible account that will appeal to a wide audience and contribute to the public debate about the lessons to be learnt and future policy options.

This volume uses state of the art models from the frontier of macroeconomics to answer key questions about how the economy functions and how policy should be conducted. The contributions cover a wide range of issues in macroeconomics and macroeconomic policy. They combine high level mathematics with economic analysis, and highlight the need to update our mathematical toolbox in order to understand the increased complexity of the macroeconomic environment. The volume represents hard evidence of high research intensity in many fields of macroeconomics, and warns against interpreting the scope of macroeconomics too narrowly. The mainstream business cycle analysis, based on dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) modelling of a particular type, has been criticised for its inability to predict or resolve the recent financial crisis. However, macroeconomic research on financial, information, and learning imperfections had not yet made their way into many of the pre-crisis DSGE models because practical econometric versions of those models were mainly designed to fit data periods that did not include financial crises. A major response to the limitations of those older DSGE models is an active research program to bring big financial shocks and various kinds of financial, learning, and labour market frictions into a new generation of DSGE models for guiding policy. The contributors to this book utilise models and modelling assumptions that go beyond particular modelling conventions. By using alternative yet plausible assumptions, they seek to enrich our knowledge and ability to explain macroeconomic phenomena. They contribute to expanding the frontier of macroeconomic knowledge in ways that will prove useful for macroeconomic policy.

This book opens new ground in the study of financial crises. It treats the financial system as a complex adaptive system and shows how lessons from network disciplines - such as ecology, epidemiology, and statistical mechanics - shed light on our understanding of financial stability. Using tools from network theory and economics, it suggests that financial systems are robust-yet-fragile, with knife-edge properties that are greatly exacerbated by the hoarding of funds and the fire sale of assets by banks. The book studies the damaging network consequences of the failure of large inter-connected institutions, explains how key funding markets can seize up across the entire financial system, and shows how the pursuit of secured finance by banks in the wake of the global financial crisis can generate systemic risks. The insights are then used to model banking systems calibrated to data to illustrate how financial sector regulators are beginning to quantify financial system stress.

The so-called Great Recession that followed the global financial crisis at the end of 2007 was the largest economic downturn since the 1930s for most rich countries. To what extent were household incomes affected by this event, and how did the effects differ across countries? This is the first cross-national study of the impact of the Great Recession on the distribution of household incomes. Looking at real income levels, poverty rates, and income inequality, it focusses on the period 2007-9, but also considers longer-term impacts. Three vital contributions are made. First, the book reviews lessons from the past about the relationships between macroeconomic change and the household income distribution. Second, it considers the experience of 21 rich OECD member countries drawing on a mixture of national accounts, and labour force and household survey data. Third, the book presents case-study evidence for six countries: Germany, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, the UK, and the USA. The book shows that, between 2007 and 2009, government support through the tax and benefit system provided a cushion against the downturn, and household income distributions did not change much. But, after 2009, there is likely to be much greater change in incomes as a result of the fiscal consolidation measures that are being put into place to address the structural deficits accompanying the recession. The book's main policy lesson is that stabilisation of the household income distribution in the face of macroeconomic turbulence is an achievable policy goal, at least in the short-term.

The early twenty-first century has seen a conspicuous absence of formal international law concerning money and finance. This book argues that this lack of formal international regulation was a significant contributing factor to the global financial crisis that began in 2007. It focuses on this lack of global substantive principles and 'hard law' rules in the field of financial regulation and monetary affairs, and analyses the emerging framework within international law that aims to govern financial institutions and markets. The global financial crisis has demonstrated the essential need for financial and monetary regulatory reform, and for the establishment of appropriate mechanisms for the settlement of financial disputes and for the regulation of cross-border financial institutions. This book therefore presents the foundations of solutions that could fill these critical gaps in international financial law. It addresses cross-border issues, financial regulation, and provides detailed analyses of monetary policies and regulation. This book is an updated collection of papers first published in the Special Edition of the Journal of International Economic Law on 'The Quest for International Law in Financial Regulation and Monetary Affairs' (Volume 12, Number 3, September 2010), which also show that the regulatory hands-off approach was not replicated in other areas of international economic law. International trade regulation witnessed an increased number of international rules and the reinforcement of a rule-oriented, if not rule-based, approach. Judicial dispute settlement and retaliation, exclusively based upon international ruling and authorization, was reinforced. Given the importance of trade regulation and WTO law, which has an established institutional and legal framework, the book therefore provides a much-needed comparative approach.

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 drawing on a vast trove of data, Richard Vague argues that such crises follow a pattern that makes them both predictable and avoidable. A Brief History of Doom examines a series of major crises over the past 200 years in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, Japan, and China—including the Great Depression and the economic meltdown of 2008. Vague demonstrates that the over-accumulation of private debt does a better job than any other variable of explaining and predicting financial crises. In a series of clear and gripping chapters, he shows that in each case the rapid growth of loans produced widespread overcapacity, which then led to the spread of bad loans and bank failures. This cycle, according to Vague, is the essence of financial crises and the script they invariably follow. The story of financial crisis is fundamentally the story of private debt and runaway lending. Convinced that we have it within our power to break the cycle, Vague provides the tools to enable politicians, bankers, and private citizens to recognize and respond to the danger signs before it begins again.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK CHOSEN AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE TELEGRAPH AND THE NEW STATESMAN "A marvellous book" Rev Richard Coles "Gripping... filled with compassion." Sunday Times "Remarkable... hopeful and uplifting." Mail on Sunday "An antidote to despair" Daily Mirror "Enthralling... vivid and humane" Observer "Exemplary" New Statesman When a plane crashes, a bomb explodes, a city floods or a pandemic begins, Lucy Easthope's phone starts to ring. Lucy is a world-leading authority on recovering from disaster. She holds governments to account, supports survivors and helps communities to rebuild. She has been at the centre of the most seismic events of the last few decades, advising on everything from the 2004 tsunami and the 7/7 bombings to the Grenfell fire and the war in Ukraine. Lucy's job is to pick up the pieces and get us ready for what comes next. Lucy takes us behind the police tape to scenes of chaos, and into government briefing rooms where confusion can reign. She also looks back at the many losses and loves of her life and career, and tells us how we can all build back after disaster. When the Dust Settles lifts us up, showing that humanity, hope and humour can - and must - be found on the darkest days.

This book deals with the genesis and dynamics of exchange rate crises in fixed or managed exchange rate systems. It provides a comprehensive treatment of the existing theories of exchange rate crises and of financial market runs. It aims to provide a survey of both the theoretical literature on international financial crises and a systematic treatment of the analytical models. It analyzes a series of macroeconomic models and demonstrates their properties and conclusions, including comparative statics and dynamic behaviour. The models cover the range of phenomena exhibited in modern crises experienced in countries with fixed or managed exchange rate systems. Among the topics covered, beyond currency sustainability, are bank runs, the interaction between bank solvency and currency stability, capital flows and borrowing constraints, uncertainty about government policies, asymmetric information and herding behaviour, contagion across markets and countries, financial markets and asset price bubbles, strategic interaction among agents and equilibrium selection, the dynamics of speculative attacks and of financial crashes in international capital markets. The book is intended for econometricians, academics, policymakers and specialists in the field, and postgraduate students in economics.

The global financial crisis has uncovered disastrous gaps in the governance of capitalism. This timely book argues for encompassing and intelligent forms of political governance of capitalism to mitigate against the possibility of future global systemic risk. This path-breaking book highlights that systemic risks emerge from a globally operating financial industry that is not only disconnected from the real economy but also allowed to hide in 'shadow banking' practices. Governance based on national regimes fails to cover 'finance-led' global capitalism. The authors argue that the risk of systemic meltdown will reappear unless intelligent governance regimes are installed, combining legally binding rules and civil society pressures to restore the balance between risk-taking and accountability. They illustrate the goal is 'resilient' capitalism in which the rules of the game are set by politics and knowledge-based discourse. Political Governance of Capitalism will prove invaluable for graduate and post-graduate students interested in economy, political science, political economy, globalization, global governance, sociology, and financial sciences.

This book is motivated by the simple hope that the cloud of the global financial crisis may yet have a silver lining--that political leaders, economists, and management scholars might seize this opportunity to reflect critically on the assumptions, practices, and infrastructures that have precipitated the crisis and to imagine and create new forms of organization that sustainably enhance the well-being of global stakeholders.
The contributors suggest that aesthetic management, high reliability and crisis management, and sustainability science have much to contribute to the resolution of the collapse that we've witnessed, and to providing enduring lessons for how to structure the institutions of the future. "Learning From the Global Financial Crisis" devotes a section to each of these areas, offering full-length chapters which explore key issues in depth, as well as shorter commentaries that focus on practical considerations. The chapters progress from micro-level issues that pertain to individuals and teams who act creatively; to the meso-level issues that pertain to the structures, practices, and processes; to the macro-level issues that pertain to the interdependent, ecological systems.
Together, the contributions emphasize the importance of developing holistic responses to the financial crisis. The result is a volume that casts new light on traditional economic and managerial theories and policies and provides fresh ideas to a new generation of scholars and practitioners.

This volume critically re-examines the profession's understanding of asset bubbles in light of the global financial crisis of 2007-09. It is well known that bubbles have occurred in the past, with the October 1929 crash as the most demonstrative example. However, the remarkably well-behaved performance of the US economy from 1945 to 2006, and, in particular during the Great Moderation period of 1984 to 2006, assured the economics profession and monetary policymakers that asset bubbles could be effectively managed with little or no real economic impact. The recent financial crisis has now triggered a debate about the emergence of a sequence of repeated bubbles in the Nasdaq market, housing market, credit market and commodity markets. The Greenspan-Bernanke Federal Reserve has followed an asymmetric approach to bubble management. This method advocates no monetary policy action during the bubble formation and growth, but a speedy response with a reduction in market rates when a bubble bursts to reduce the potential loss of output and employment. It was supported by academic research and seemed to work well until September 2008 when the financial system came close to a complete collapse. The realities of the recent financial crisis have intensified theoretical modeling, empirical methodologies, and debate on policy issues surrounding asset price bubbles and their potentially considerable adverse economic impact if poorly managed. Choosing to take a novel approach, the editors of this book have selected five classic papers that represent accepted thinking about asset bubbles prior to the financial crisis. They also include original papers challenging orthodox thinking and presenting new insights. A summary essay by the editors highlights the lessons learned and experiences gained since the crisis.

The Tyranny Of Growth is a modern epic that exposes the lie of economic growth.

It provocatively recounts how the 2008 global financial meltdown and COVID-19 pandemic have become the leading cause of governments' and multilateral institutions' global spectacular failure. It brilliantly explains how a single number - GDP - came to have such bewildering power over our lives, despite its ruinous consequences.

But ultimately the book strives to illuminate a new way of imagining the world. 

This critical and thought-provoking book explores the causes and consequences of Europe's failed political and economic institutions. Europe's recession has created new challenges as market turmoil has shaken the foundations of the twin pillars of the new drive for European integration - political and monetary unions. This book critically assesses the patchwork solutions continually offered to hold the troubled unions together. Failed political policies, from the prodigious 'Common Agricultural Policy' to ever more common fiscal stimulus packages, are shown to have bred less than stellar results in the past, and to have devastating implications for future European growth. The contributors outline the manner through which European monetary union has subsidized and continues to exacerbate the burgeoning debt crisis. Most strikingly, the interplay between Europe's political and economic realms is exposed as the boondoggle it is, with increasingly bureaucratic institutions plaguing the continent and endangering future potential. Combining political and economic analysis, this comprehensive book will prove essential for researchers and students in international business and macroeconomics. Educated laymen wanting a keener perspective on Europe's recession will also find this book to be invaluable.

Global financial crisis, the consequence of an unsustainable growth pattern that has been emerging since a decade, impacts the economies in all the regions, irrespective of their degree of globalization and deft economic management. Both developed and developing countries have different threats from the crisis, and devised appropriate measures to contain it. South Asia weathered the crisis much better than most of the regions in the world. The region is least-affected by the global meltdown, due partly to the relatively closed nature of some of its members in respect of trade and capital flows; and partly to the strong fundamentals and prudent policies of the rest. Resilience is mostly seen in South Asia not only in knowledge-intensive services and exports of garments and textiles, but also in workers' remittances and foreign direct investment. India, being driven by internal demand; sound domestic policies; and well-regulated banking system, has escaped the worst effects of the crisis to show assured signs of strong recovery.

In 2012, Ben Bernanke, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, gave a series of lectures about the Federal Reserve and the 2008 financial crisis, as part of a course at George Washington University on the role of the Federal Reserve in the economy. In this unusual event, Bernanke revealed important background and insights into the central bank's crucial actions during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Taken directly from these historic talks, The Federal Reserve and the Financial Crisis offers insight into the guiding principles behind the Fed's activities and the lessons to be learned from its handling of recent economic challenges. Bernanke traces the origins of the Federal Reserve, from its inception in 1914 through the Second World War, and he looks at the Fed post-1945, when it began operating independently from other governmental departments such as the Treasury. During this time the Fed grappled with episodes of high inflation, finally tamed by then-chairman Paul Volcker. Bernanke also explores the period under his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, known as the Great Moderation. Bernanke then delves into the Fed's reaction to the recent financial crisis, focusing on the central bank's role as the lender of last resort and discussing efforts that injected liquidity into the banking system. Bernanke points out that monetary policies alone cannot revive the economy, and he describes ongoing structural and regulatory problems that need to be addressed. Providing first-hand knowledge of how problems in the financial system were handled, The Federal Reserve and the Financial Crisis will long be studied by those interested in this critical moment in history.

Prior to the financial crisis of 2007-2008, economists thought that no such crisis could or would ever happen again in the United States, that financial events of such magnitude were a thing of the distant past. In fact, observers of that distant past-the period from the half century prior to the Civil War up to the passage of deposit insurance during the Great Depression, which was marked by repeated financial crises-note that while legislation immediately after crises reacted to their effects, economists and policymakers continually failed to grasp the true lessons to be learned. Gary Gorton, considered by many to be the authority on the financial crisis of our time, holds that economists fundamentally misunderstand financial crises-what they are, why they occur, and why there were none in the U.S. between 1934 and 2007. In Misunderstanding Financial Crises, he illustrates that financial crises are inherent to the production of bank debt, which is used to conduct transactions, and that unless the government designs intelligent regulation, crises will continue. Economists, he writes, looked from a certain point of view and missed everything that was important: the evolution of capital markets and the banking system, the existence of new financial instruments, and the size of certain money markets like the sale and repurchase market. Delving into how such a massive intellectual failure could have happened, Gorton offers a back-to-basics elucidation of financial crises, and shows how they are not rare, idiosyncratic, unfortunate events caused by a coincidence of unconnected factors. By looking back to the "Quiet Period " from 1934 to 2007 when there were no systemic crises, and to the "Panic of 2007-2008, " he brings together such issues as bank debt and liquidity, credit booms and manias, and moral hazard and too-big-too-fail, to illustrate the costs of bank failure and the true causes of financial crises. He argues that the successful regulation that prevented crises did not adequately keep pace with innovation in the financial sector, due in large part to economists' misunderstandings. He then looks forward to offer both a better way for economists to conceive of markets, as well as a description of the regulation necessary to address the historical threat of financial crises.

In all major regions of the world, the economic recession is deep-seated, resulting in mass unemployment, the collapse of state social programs and the impoverishment of millions of people. The meltdown of financial markets was the result of institutionalised fraud and financial manipulation. The economic crisis is accompanied by a world-wide process of militarisation, a war without borders led by the U.S. and its NATO allies. This book takes the reader through the corridors of the Federal Reserve, into the plush corporate boardrooms on Wall Street where far-reaching financial transactions are routinely undertaken. Each of the authors in this timely collection digs beneath the gilded surface to reveal a complex web of deceit and media distortion which serves to conceal the workings of the global economic system and its devastating impacts on people's lives.

"Of all the economic bubbles that have been pricked," the editors of The Economist recently observed, "few have burst more spectacularly than the reputation of economics itself." Indeed, the financial crisis that crested in 2008 destroyed the credibility of the economic thinking that had guided policymakers for a generation. But what will take its place?
In How the Economy Works, one of our leading economists provides a jargon-free exploration of the current crisis, offering a powerful argument for how economics must change to get us out of it. Roger E. A. Farmer traces the swings between classical and Keynesian economics since the early twentieth century, gracefully explaining the elements of both theories. During the Great Depression, Keynes challenged the longstanding idea that an economy was a self-correcting mechanism; but his school gave way to a resurgence of classical economics in the 1970s-a rise that ended with the current crisis. Rather than simply allowing the pendulum to swing back, Farmer writes, we must synthesize the two. From classical economics, he takes the idea that a sound theory must explain how individuals behave-how our collective choices shape the economy. From Keynesian economics, he adopts the principle that markets do not always work well, that capitalism needs some guidance. The goal, he writes, is to correct the excesses of a free-market economy without stifling entrepreneurship and instituting central planning.
Recent events have shown that we cannot afford to treat economics as an ivory-tower abstraction. It has a direct impact on our lives by guiding regulators and policymakers as they make decisions with far-reaching practical consequences. Written in clear, accessible language, How the Economy Works makes an argument that no one should ignore.

In this major bestseller, Paul Krugman warns that, like diseases that have become resistant to antibiotics, the economic maladies that caused the Great Depression have made a comeback. He lays bare the 2008 financial crisis the greatest since the 1930s tracing it to the failure of regulation to keep pace with an out-of-control financial system. He also tells us how to contain the crisis and turn around a world economy sliding into a deep recession. Brilliantly crafted in Krugman s trademark style lucid, lively, and supremely informed this new edition of The Return of Depression Economics has become an instant classic. A hard-hitting new foreword takes the paperback edition right up to the present moment."

The global financial crisis of 2008 ushered in a system of informal decision-making in the grey zone between economics and politics. Legitimized by a rhetoric of emergency, ad hoc bodies have usurped democratically elected governments. In line with the neoliberal credo, the recent crisis has been used to realize the politically impossible and to re-align executive power with the interests of the finance industry. In this important book, Joseph Vogl offers a much longer perspective on these developments, showing how the dynamics of modern finance capitalism have always rested on a complex and constantly evolving relationship between private creditors and the state. Combining historical and theoretical analysis, Vogl argues that over the last three centuries, finance has become a "fourth estate," marked by the systematic interconnection of treasury and finance, of political and private economic interests. Against this historical background, Vogl explores the latest phase in the financialization of government, namely the dramatic transfer of power from states to markets in the latter half of the 20th century. From the liberalization of credit and capital markets to the privatization of social security, he shows how policy has actively enabled a restructuring of the economy around the financial sector. Political systems are "imprisoned" by the regime of finance, while the corporate model suffuses society, enclosing populations in the production of financial capital. The Ascendancy of Finance provides valuable and unsettling insight into the genesis of modern power and where it truly resides.