The Future of Money

Mary Mellor

Description

As the recent financial crisis has revealed, the state is central to the stability of the money system, while the chaotic privately-owned banks reap the benefits without shouldering the risks. This book argues that money is a public resource that has been hijacked by capitalism.



Mary Mellor explores the history of money and modern banking, showing how finance capital has captured bank-created money to enhance speculative ‘leveraged’ profits as well as destroying collective approaches to economic life. Meanwhile, most individuals, and the public economy, have been mired in debt. To correct this obvious injustice, Mellor proposes a public and democratic future for money. Ways are put forward for structuring the money and banking system to provision societies on an equitable, ecologically sustainable 'sufficiency' basis.



This fascinating study of money should be read by all economics students looking for an original analysis of the economy during the current crisis.
Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. What is Money

2. The Privatisation of Money

3. 'People’s Capitalism': Financialisation and Debt

4. Credit and Capitalism

5. The Financial Crisis of 2007-8

6. Lessons from the Crisis

7. Public Money and Sufficiency Provisioning

Appendix:Acronyms and Abbreviations

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Banking
• Economie gestion
• Bank
• Political economy
• Economics
• Business
• Banks

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 09 avril 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781849644501
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

The Future of Money

The Future of Money FromFinancialCrisistopublicResource

MARY MELLOR

First published 2010 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010

www.plutobooks.com

Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010

Copyright © Mary Mellor 2010

The right of Mary Mellor to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN ISBN

978 0 7453 2995 6 978 0 7453 2994 9

Hardback Paperback

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.

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Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, 33 Livonia Road, Sidmouth, EX10 9JB, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Printed and bound in the European Union by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

For Kate and Joe

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Acknowledgements

Introduction 1 What is Money? 2 The Privatisation of Money 3 ‘People’s Capitalism’: Financialisation and Debt 4 Credit and Capitalism 5 The Financial Crisis of 2007–08 6 Lessons from the Crisis 7 Public Money and Sufficiency Provisioning

Appendix: Acronyms and Abbreviations Bibliography Index

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1 8 31 58 82 109 131 152

176 177 185

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many, many thanks to Molly Scott Cato, Paul Langley, Sue Bennet and Nigel Mellor for their careful reading of the text and very helpful comments and suggestions. Thanks also to Roger van Zwanenberg for helping frame the book and to two anonymous referees for very useful suggestions.

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INTRODUCTION

The financial crisis of 2007–08 has revealed both the instability of the global financial system and the importance of the state as lender, borrower and investor of last resort. The world of deregulated privatised finance proved not to be a source of wealth for all, but a drain on the public economy, as states poured money into the private financial sector. It has also been a destroyer of personal economic security as savings were threatened, jobs lost and homes repossessed. The crisis in the financial sector, most notably in Britain and the United States, but also in Europe and many other parts of the world, contrasts with the bombastic optimism of the latter part of the twentieth century and the early part of the twenty-first century with its glory days of ‘Big Bang’ deregulation and the financial sector’s dominance over national politics. Far from celebrating the ‘rolling back’ of the ‘nanny’ state, the implosion of deregulated finance has directly contradicted the neoliberal case that the market and its money system is a self- regulating process that will only be distorted by state intervention. The crisis raises many questions about the way the financial system operates under late capitalism, in particular the role of banks and other financial institutions. The financial system is about the flow of money in its many forms through human societies and this, in turn, raises questions about the nature of money itself. Is money just a mechanism that represents economic processes or is it a social mechanism in its own right? Where does money come from, how does it operate? Who controls money, and how? In this book the case will be made that money is a complex phenomenon whose economic functioning relies on social trust and public authority. The role of states in attempting to rescue the financial sector challenges the idea that money is a purely economic phenomenon. The crisis reveals money’s social and

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