Assetization – Turning Things into Assets in Technoscientific Capitalism
By: Kean Birch, Fabian Muniesa – York University, Toronto, Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation
Assetization examines how assets are constructed and how a variety of things can be turned into assets, analyzing the interests, activities, skills, organizations, and relations entangled in this process.
The contributors consider the assetization of knowledge, including patents, personal data, and biomedical innovation; of infrastructure, including railways and energy; of nature, including mineral deposits, agricultural seeds, and “natural capital”; and of publics, including such public goods as higher education and “monetizable social ills.” Taken together, the chapters show the usefulness of assetization as an analytical tool and as an element in the critique of capitalism.
Greed Is Dead – Politics After Individualism
By: Paul Collier, John Kay – Oxford University
Throughout history, successful societies have created institutions which channel both competition and co-operation to achieve complex goals of general benefit. These institutions make the difference between societies that thrive and those paralyzed by discord, the difference between prosperous and poor economies. Such societies are pluralist but their pluralism is disciplined. Successful societies are also rare and fragile. We could not have built modernity without the exceptional competitive and co-operative instincts of humans, but in recent decades the balance between these instincts has become dangerously skewed: mutuality has been undermined by an extreme individualism which has weakened co-operation and polarized our politics.
Collier and Kay show how a reaffirmation of the values of mutuality could refresh and restore politics, business and the environments in which people live. Politics could reverse the moves to extremism and tribalism; businesses could replace the greed that has degraded corporate culture; the communities and decaying places that are home to many could overcome despondency and again be prosperous and purposeful. As the world emerges from an unprecedented crisis we have the chance to examine society afresh and build a politics beyond individualism.
The Political Economy of the Special Relationship: Anglo-American Development from the Gold Standard to the Financial Crisis
By: Jeremy Green – University of Cambridge
Drawing from new archival research, Green questions the conventional view of international economic history as a series of cyclical transitions among hegemonic powers. Instead, he explores the longstanding interactive role of private and public financial institutions in Britain and the United States—most notably the close links between their financial markets, central banks, and monetary and fiscal policies. He shows that America’s unparalleled post-WWII financial power was facilitated, and in important ways constrained, by British capitalism, as the United States often had to work with and through British politicians, officials, and bankers to achieve its vision of a liberal economic order. Transatlantic integration and competition spurred the rise of the financial sector, an increased reliance on debt, a global easing of regulation, the ascendance of monetarism, and the transition to neoliberalism.
From the gold standard to the recent global financial crisis and beyond, The Political Economy of the Special Relationship recasts the history of global finance through the prism of Anglo-American development.
How did the United States come to dominate the global economy? Jeremy Green’s detailed history persuasively demonstrates that American ascendance could only develop through the conjunction of US-UK financial interests. This is a crystal-clear account of financial globalization and a powerful reminder of the sources of geopolitical influence.
Cornelia Woll, Sciences Po
The Money Masters – The Progress and Power of Central Banks
By: Onno de Beaufort Wijnholds – IMF
Central banks are major players in today’s economic and financial policy-making. While respected for their technical acumen and their pivotal role in defusing the global financial crisis, they are at the same time mistrusted by others and considered to be too powerful. In order to contribute to a better understanding of the why, what and how of central banking, this book traces the progress of central banks from modest beginnings, including financing wars, to the powerful institutions they have become. It describes the evolution of the Bank of England to a fully-fledged central bank, the very different route taken by the Federal Reserve and, much later, by the European Central Bank. The gold standard, floating exchange rates, and the battle against inflation are covered in depth, alongside a review of modern monetary policy and central banks’ role in maintaining financial stability.
The Money Masters is fundamental to understanding the co-evolution of theories, institutions, practices, and problems within monetary economies. It provides a remarkably clear and thorough account of the shifting relationship between central banks and the government over the years, as well as a brilliant overview of the challenges that monetary institutions face today.
Stefano Solari, University of Padua
