Today’s global financial system bears little resemblance to what it was at the end of the twentieth century. Shadow banking—financial activity taking place outside existing regulatory frameworks—has grown so important that it now serves as the backbone of the entire system. The shadow banking system, however, is highly unstable and the main reason why the financial system has remained in crisis mode since the 2008 financial crisis. To maintain stability, central banks like the Fed and the European Central Bank have come to use radical new monetary policy instruments which were inconceivable until very recently. Without intervention on the part of central banks, existing financial systems would completely collapse.
As Joscha Wullweber shows, there has been a radical change in the state-market nexus. With governments refraining from strong and comprehensive fiscal and financial regulatory policies, central banks have become the main stabilizing force and the nodal point of financial circulation. These overburdened institutions are called on to make near-daily interventions to avert crisis. Wullweber calls this historic phase central bank capitalism. His book offers a lucid account of our current state of permanent crisis with its new dilemmas and paradoxes that pose enormous challenges to financial and economic stability.
Table of Content
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction:Central Banks and Power
2. The ‘Boring’ World of Central Banking: Monetary Policy Prior to the 20072009 Global Financial Crisis
3. A Political Theory of Money
4. Security Structures and Socioeconomic Layers
5. Sources of Instability in the Financial System
6. The Shadow Banking System and Free Market Capitalism
7. A Never-Ending Crisis: The Global Financial System in the Twenty-First Century
8. Masters of Stability:The Unconventional Monetary Policy of Central Banks
9. Central Bank Capitalism and the Elasticity Provision of Last Resort
10. Outlook: Navigating in Turbulent Times
Notes
References
Index
About the author
Joscha Wullweber is Heisenberg Professor of Political Economy, Transformation and Sustainability and the director of [tra:ce] at Witten/Herdecke University, Germany.
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