democratizing finance

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The Revolution That Wasn't: GameStop, Reddit, and the Fleecing of Small Investors by Spencer Jakab

4chan, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Swan, book value, buy and hold, classic study, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deal flow, democratizing finance, diversified portfolio, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Everybody Ought to Be Rich, fake news, family office, financial innovation, gamification, global macro, global pandemic, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, Gordon Gekko, Hacker News, income inequality, index fund, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, John Bogle, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, Marc Andreessen, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, Masayoshi Son, meme stock, Menlo Park, move fast and break things, Myron Scholes, PalmPilot, passive investing, payment for order flow, Pershing Square Capital Management, pets.com, plutocrats, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, random walk, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Saturday Night Live, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, TikTok, Tony Hsieh, trickle-down economics, Vanguard fund, Vision Fund, WeWork, zero-sum game

The meme-stock squeeze presented an excellent opportunity to ask some hard questions about how much of our savings wind up enriching Wall Street, and what could be done to change the industry’s incentives. A few of the statements made and questions asked by members of the committee got to that point. For example, Illinois representative Sean Casten had an uncomfortable observation as he addressed Tenev. “There is an innate tension in your business model, between democratizing finance, which is a noble calling, and being a conduit to feed fish to sharks.” Another member asked Tenev if he should have seen the trading frenzy coming. Tenev called the meme-stock short squeeze a “black swan” event that had a one in 3.5 million chance of occurring. Maybe the former mathematics PhD student’s numbers were accurate, but a black swan, a term popularized by bestselling author and risk analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb, is something one simply didn’t anticipate, not just a rarity.

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It is Robinhood’s largest single source of income, paying it for the right to execute its stock and options orders in lieu of their being sent to an exchange where those transactions are visible to everyone. That practice, “payment for order flow,” would attract some uncomfortable questions at the hearing. In much the same way that Robinhood can point to the good it does by “democratizing finance,” Citadel can and does tout how much money it saves retail investors by efficiently matching up orders. The numbers are real, but you only save money on something if you decide to buy it in the first place. The practice makes zero-dollar commissions and frenetic trading by investors with small accounts possible.

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Everyone’s cheering, starting to make a ton of money, and then all of a sudden, you know, boom, headline, these hedge funds are in trouble,” he says. “Then it turns into what appears, in retrospect, to be a movement. The intention was always to make money.”[2] Despite being named after the mythical hero who stole from the rich to give to the poor and its stated mission “to democratize finance for all,” the same goes for Robinhood. Ironically, the first company started by Vlad Tenev and his cofounder Baiju Bhatt after Tenev dropped out of his math PhD program at UCLA was meant to help hedge funds trade more efficiently. The two learned about the plumbing of the financial system in the process of setting it up and spotted an opportunity.

The Antisocial Network: The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Street to Its Knees by Ben Mezrich

4chan, Asperger Syndrome, Bayesian statistics, bitcoin, Carl Icahn, contact tracing, data science, democratizing finance, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, fake news, gamification, global pandemic, Google Hangouts, Hyperloop, meme stock, Menlo Park, payment for order flow, Pershing Square Capital Management, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, security theater, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, social distancing, Tesla Model S, too big to fail, Two Sigma, value at risk, wealth creators

They’d chosen the name “Robinhood” for obvious reasons; the medieval, mythical character Robin and his merry band of thieves had made it their mission to redistribute wealth, by stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Vlad and Baiju built their own mission statement in allegorical style: instead of redistributing wealth, they would “democratize finance”—giving the retail traders Wall Street had spent a century steamrolling the necessary tools to fight back, on even ground. Robinhood’s plan was simple and twofold: offer regular people commission-free trading and do away with minimum account balances. Furthermore, the company from the start would be built around the smartphone rather than the computer—because if there was one thing young people knew, loved, and trusted, it was that shiny little screen in their hand.

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But Emma knew better than most—the story was painfully incomplete. Because what was less obvious about the Robinhood story—what barely made it into the glowing stories and fairy tales—was how Robinhood actually made their money. And who could blame the magazines? “Payment for order flow” was a mouthful, and it didn’t make anywhere near as good copy as “democratizing finance.” In simple terms, Robinhood was able to offer zero commissions because their users weren’t actually their customers—they were, essentially, the product. Robinhood bundled up and sold their users’ trades to market makers—giant financial firms such as Two Sigma, Susquehanna, but primarily Citadel—who could near-instantly analyze the trading flow and profit by taking tiny slivers out of the spreads between bids and asks.

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Vlad Tenev came awake suddenly to a barrage of panicking technology; his cell phone vibrating and blinking on the table next to his bed, his laptop computer pinging frantically to itself as it was pelted by e-mail after rapid-fired e-mail; even, perhaps, a landline lost somewhere in his sprawling California home, a short commute by car or bike or skateboard from the Robinhood offices in Menlo Park. Vlad rubbed his eyes, chasing the last vestiges of sleep away. He couldn’t remember what he’d been dreaming about—no doubt something having to do with democratized finance and level playing fields, or maybe renewable energy, healthy drinking water, a living minimum wage—but it had probably involved cats, and possibly even GameStop—because by the time he’d gone to sleep the night before, everyone, everywhere, had been talking about GameStop. He rolled over in his bed and reached for the phone first, hoping to quell the electronic onslaught before it woke his wife and toddler.

The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution Is Transforming Currencies and Finance by Eswar S. Prasad

access to a mobile phone, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, algorithmic trading, altcoin, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Bretton Woods, business intelligence, buy and hold, capital controls, carbon footprint, cashless society, central bank independence, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, cross-border payments, cryptocurrency, deglobalization, democratizing finance, disintermediation, distributed ledger, diversified portfolio, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, eurozone crisis, fault tolerance, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial independence, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Flash crash, floating exchange rates, full employment, gamification, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, index fund, inflation targeting, informal economy, information asymmetry, initial coin offering, Internet Archive, Jeff Bezos, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, light touch regulation, liquidity trap, litecoin, lockdown, loose coupling, low interest rates, Lyft, M-Pesa, machine readable, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, mobile money, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Network effects, new economy, offshore financial centre, open economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, PalmPilot, passive investing, payday loans, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, price anchoring, profit motive, QR code, quantitative easing, quantum cryptography, RAND corporation, random walk, Real Time Gross Settlement, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, robo advisor, Ross Ulbricht, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, seigniorage, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart contracts, SoftBank, special drawing rights, the payments system, too big to fail, transaction costs, uber lyft, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, Vision Fund, Vitalik Buterin, Wayback Machine, WeWork, wikimedia commons, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

While the advent of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin has grabbed the headlines, it is likely that a broader set of changes resulting from advances in technology will eventually have a more profound and lasting impact on financial markets and central banks. The overall impact of this disruption could be beneficial in many ways, potentially democratizing finance and improving the lives of even poorer households by expanding their access to savings and credit products. Savers will be able to choose from a broader array of options while small-scale entrepreneurs secure financing from sources other than banks, which tend to have stringent loan underwriting and collateral requirements.

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The Big Picture The recent and looming changes to money and finance discussed in this book have significant implications for other phenomena, such as income and wealth inequality. These changes could make it easier for even indigent households to gain entrée into the financial system, bring an array of products and services within their reach, and thereby democratize finance. But it is equally possible that the benefits of innovations in financial technologies will be captured largely by the wealthy as a result of disparities in financial literacy and digital access. Thus, the implications for income and wealth inequality—which have risen sharply in many countries, fomenting political and social tensions—are far from obvious.

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Thus, and somewhat paradoxically, richer households—and bigger businesses—generally find it easier to obtain most forms of credit, ranging from credit cards to mortgage loans to loans for machinery. It is, as James Baldwin famously observed, extremely expensive to be poor. This situation can further exacerbate economic inequality. Clearly, innovations that democratize finance and make the fruits of a financial system accessible to a wider swath of the population would be desirable. Given the cost structure and financial incentives that traditional banks face, they might have little interest in pursuing such business. This is where financial innovations come into play, as we will see in Chapter 3.

Sabotage: The Financial System's Nasty Business by Anastasia Nesvetailova, Ronen Palan

Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, big-box store, bitcoin, Black-Scholes formula, blockchain, Blythe Masters, bonus culture, Bretton Woods, business process, collateralized debt obligation, corporate raider, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, critique of consumerism, cryptocurrency, currency risk, democratizing finance, digital capitalism, distributed ledger, diversification, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, en.wikipedia.org, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial repression, fixed income, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, Gordon Gekko, high net worth, Hyman Minsky, independent contractor, information asymmetry, initial coin offering, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, litecoin, London Interbank Offered Rate, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, margin call, market fundamentalism, Michael Milken, mortgage debt, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, peer-to-peer lending, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, price mechanism, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Ross Ulbricht, shareholder value, short selling, smart contracts, sovereign wealth fund, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail

Wire and transfer fees will be decreased by using bitcoin, clearing and settlement can happen instantly, loans and credit applications can be assessed on the spot and consumers will have instant access to the funds they need and the answers they require.32 The political appeal of blockchain is rather unique. The Right cheers the ability of the technology to force a decentralization of the system and independence from formal governance structures. The Left sees an enormous potential of blockchain to democratize finance as a system that has become systemically corrupt, and thus empower people’s direct participation. Academics and economic historians are convinced that technology will forever change banking as we know it. Veblenians are among those who do not share the general enthusiasm. They cast a weary eye on blockchain and its offspring, as well as on the whole new fintech phenomenon.

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Self-interested financial actors would balance each other and ensure that the ‘market’ would root out unsavoury behaviour. Financial institutions, keen to maintain credibility and market reputation, would navigate the risks prudently. It became fashionable to believe that egotism and self-interest will ensure an optimal playing field. Financial innovation has been celebrated in the name of democratizing finance, expanding credit and improving the techniques of mediating between capital markets and borrowers. The real scandal of the costs of deregulated finance is not that it unravelled amid the financial fiasco of 2007–9. It is that its origins had been uncovered and dealt with back in the 1930s, practically to the last detail.

Finance and the Good Society by Robert J. Shiller

Alan Greenspan, Alvin Roth, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Bernie Madoff, buy and hold, capital asset pricing model, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, computer age, corporate governance, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, democratizing finance, Deng Xiaoping, diversification, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, eurozone crisis, experimental economics, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial thriller, fixed income, full employment, fundamental attribution error, George Akerlof, Great Leap Forward, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, information asymmetry, invisible hand, John Bogle, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, land reform, loss aversion, Louis Bachelier, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, market design, means of production, microcredit, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, Nelson Mandela, Occupy movement, passive investing, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, profit maximization, quantitative easing, random walk, regulatory arbitrage, Richard Thaler, Right to Buy, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sharpe ratio, short selling, Simon Kuznets, Skype, social contagion, Steven Pinker, tail risk, telemarketer, Thales and the olive presses, Thales of Miletus, The Market for Lemons, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Vanguard fund, young professional, zero-sum game, Zipcar

Dealing with that risk is left to our conscience and to our human spirit. Chapter 29 The Dispersal of Ownership of Capital The history of nancial capitalism is to a substantial extent a history of deliberate government policies to disperse nancial interests, to disperse ownership across a wider segment of the population. Such policies have helped democratize finance. People seldom realize to what extent we live in a society that is structured by nancial design to become better and better over time. The history that brought us to certain nancial arrangements is often forgotten, and it is useful to remind ourselves of some of that history. Here I o er some examples of past progress that is unseen and unappreciated today.

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But these are problems that we associate with nance only because advanced nance is used as a tool by some who wish to preserve their special status. It is not the nancial tools themselves that create the caste structure, though their mechanisms are part of the equilibrium. The same nancial tools can also, if suitably designed and democratized, become a means to break free from the grip of any caste equilibrium. Truly democratic finance can enable one to escape outcast status. Financial capitalism is a work in progress. It is not yet perfected, but it is gradually improving. As we have seen, it is de ned by a long list of nancial practices and speci c roles and responsibilities for people within those practices. Watching most of these people in operation from day to day, one comes to feel that in our modern society caste-like behavior has been much attenuated.

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Today it is largely a list of the descendants of the same families who were wealthy and prominent a century ago, and it has largely been forgotten by mainstream society.3 Much the same has happened to Burke’s Peerage in the United Kingdom and its European counterpart, the Almanach de Gotha, which ceased publication in 1944.4 In China the national records of degree-holding literati and the local gazetteers died out before the end of the Qing dynasty in 1912. There is a more egalitarian spirit abroad in the world, and this spirit is supported by democratized finance. Partly it is the presumption, the arrogance, that accompanies economic power that rankles. And the fact that so many people seem to admire the wealthy and powerful bothers us. Why do people think the wealthy are so special? Even presidents wonder about that. Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, I am simply unable to make myself take the attitude of respect toward the very wealthy men which such an enormous multitude of people evidently feel.

The Pyramid of Lies: Lex Greensill and the Billion-Dollar Scandal by Duncan Mavin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Adam Neumann (WeWork), air freight, banking crisis, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, Boeing 737 MAX, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, carbon footprint, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, democratizing finance, Donald Trump, Eyjafjallajökull, financial engineering, fixed income, global pandemic, global supply chain, Gordon Gekko, Greensill Capital, high net worth, Kickstarter, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Masayoshi Son, means of production, Menlo Park, mittelstand, move fast and break things, NetJets, Network effects, Ponzi scheme, private military company, proprietary trading, remote working, rewilding, Rishi Sunak, rolodex, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, supply chain finance, Tim Haywood, Vision Fund, WeWork, work culture

David Brierwood, Lex’s old mentor from Morgan Stanley, was a Crown Representative from 2014 to 2018, and he began working for Greensill Capital from 2014. Lex also hired former UK Home Secretary David Blunkett and Australia’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Julie Bishop. How did he get the politicians on board? Some of them might have bought into Lex’s claim that he was ‘democratizing finance’. Typically, those closest to Greensill were given a major financial incentive. The firm was a big payer – salaries were sometimes double the norm. And Lex distributed shares liberally too. One politician who turned him down was the late Paul Myners, the former UK Treasury minister under Gordon Brown, who passed away in early 2022.

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The magazine even included a full-page photo of Lex, grinning like Time magazine’s person of the year, in a dark blue suit, crisp white shirt and perfectly knotted crystal-blue tie. His bio included the MBA, the law qualification, his stints at Morgan Stanley and Citi and in the UK government. It also said: ‘He advised both Downing Street and the White House on the launch of their own supply chain finance initiatives.’ Lex talked gushingly of democratizing finance, of having small businesses close to his heart, though he also said that clients were typically large multinational companies. The returns on offer are ‘hugely attractive’, he said, as are ‘the short duration and insurance cover of the underlying notes.’ The article said that Greensill Capital had started out with ‘a seasoned team of specialists’ and had grown to more than 160 staff in London, New York, Chicago, Frankfurt, Sydney and Mexico City.

Money, Real Quick: The Story of M-PESA by Tonny K. Omwansa, Nicholas P. Sullivan, The Guardian

Blue Ocean Strategy, BRICs, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, cashless society, cloud computing, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, delayed gratification, dematerialisation, democratizing finance, digital divide, disruptive innovation, end-to-end encryption, financial exclusion, financial innovation, financial intermediation, income per capita, Kibera, Kickstarter, M-Pesa, microcredit, mobile money, Network effects, new economy, reserve currency, Salesforce, Silicon Valley, software as a service, tontine, transaction costs

In 2007, mobile money took off successfully after a number of other unsuccessful initiatives, meaning that the shilling can be represented by an SMS message. Money need not be metal nor paper nor cowrie shell, but can be an electronic flash on a screen as long as there is trust that the bearer of the flash will be able to redeem it when needed or use it as a method of exchange. The shift to mobile money, in theory, democratizes finance by increasing the density of access points (anyone who has a phone) and by reducing the cost of transacting (sending an SMS versus making a trip), both of which had restricted financial services to wealthier and more urban residents. Mobile money is helping to move people from informal to quasi-formal and formal financial services, some of which are quite new and innovative.

What's Yours Is Mine: Against the Sharing Economy by Tom Slee

4chan, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, asset-backed security, barriers to entry, Benchmark Capital, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, big-box store, bike sharing, bitcoin, blockchain, Californian Ideology, citizen journalism, collaborative consumption, commons-based peer production, congestion charging, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, data acquisition, data science, David Brooks, democratizing finance, do well by doing good, don't be evil, Dr. Strangelove, emotional labour, Evgeny Morozov, gentrification, gig economy, Hacker Ethic, impact investing, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, invisible hand, Jacob Appelbaum, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kevin Roose, Khan Academy, Kibera, Kickstarter, license plate recognition, Lyft, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, move fast and break things, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, Network effects, new economy, Occupy movement, openstreetmap, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, principal–agent problem, profit motive, race to the bottom, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, rent control, ride hailing / ride sharing, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, software is eating the world, South of Market, San Francisco, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, the long tail, The Nature of the Firm, Thomas L Friedman, transportation-network company, Travis Kalanick, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ultimatum game, urban planning, WeWork, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, Y Combinator, Yochai Benkler, Zipcar

As a final example of the distortion of a commons, consider peer-to-peer lending company Lending Club. Set up in 2007, it is now the leader in a wave of innovations that Rachel Botsman describes with typical enthusiasm: [A] new generation of person-to-person and crowd-driven funding, lending, currency and investment services that will decentralize and democratize finance, money and banking . . . It is a subject I am passionate about. How can we shift banking back to being a trusted pillar of society? How can we create monetary systems where the real benefits flow back to individuals, not the big financial mega stores? How can we create financial access to underserved communities? 

Kings of Crypto: One Startup's Quest to Take Cryptocurrency Out of Silicon Valley and Onto Wall Street by Jeff John Roberts

4chan, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, altcoin, Apple II, Bernie Sanders, Bertram Gilfoyle, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Blythe Masters, Bonfire of the Vanities, Burning Man, buttonwood tree, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, democratizing finance, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, double helix, driverless car, Elliott wave, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, family office, financial engineering, Flash crash, forensic accounting, hacker house, Hacker News, hockey-stick growth, index fund, information security, initial coin offering, Jeff Bezos, John Gilmore, Joseph Schumpeter, litecoin, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, Menlo Park, move fast and break things, Multics, Network effects, offshore financial centre, open borders, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, proprietary trading, radical decentralization, ransomware, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Shiller, rolodex, Ross Ulbricht, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, Satoshi Nakamoto, sharing economy, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, smart contracts, SoftBank, software is eating the world, Startup school, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, transaction costs, Vitalik Buterin, WeWork, work culture , Y Combinator, zero-sum game

The Financial Times’ influential Alphaville column spewed snark at ICOs and “crypto bros,” warning it would all end in tears. But such doomsday prophecies from the financial establishment made little impression inside the bubble of Silicon Valley, where the tech elite were buzzing about an essay published by one of their own. Titled “Thoughts on Tokens,” the essay explained how ICO-style fundraising would help democratize finance and throw open the door to investments from around the globe: no longer would startups have to depend on a clique of venture capitalists to get off the ground. The high priests of Silicon Valley would soon be competing with a global base of token buyers to invest in new companies. The essay’s author was Balaji Srinivasan—the same Balaji Srinivasan who had turned up at Coinbase three years before looking like a hobo/drug dealer with Ivy League ideas, and who was now a partner at the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World by Donald Sull, Kathleen M. Eisenhardt

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Apollo 13, asset allocation, Atul Gawande, barriers to entry, Basel III, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, carbon footprint, Checklist Manifesto, complexity theory, Craig Reynolds: boids flock, Credit Default Swap, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, democratizing finance, diversification, drone strike, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, Exxon Valdez, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Glass-Steagall Act, Golden age of television, haute cuisine, invention of the printing press, Isaac Newton, Kickstarter, late fees, Lean Startup, Louis Pasteur, Lyft, machine translation, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, Nate Silver, Network effects, obamacare, Paul Graham, performance metric, price anchoring, RAND corporation, risk/return, Saturday Night Live, seminal paper, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Startup school, statistical model, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, transportation-network company, two-sided market, Wall-E, web application, Y Combinator, Zipcar

. [>] In an insightful article: Tina Fey, “Lessons from Late Night,” New Yorker, March 7, 2011. [>] Indiegogo’s rules reflect: Kathy is grateful for the superb research help of Annie Case in comparing Indiegogo and Kickstarter. Christina Farr, “Indiegogo Founder Danae Ringelmann: ‘We Will Never Lose Sight of Our Vision to Democratize Finance,’” Venture Beat, February 21, 2014, http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/21/; Dan Schawbel, “Slava Rubin on How Indiegogo Has Created Jobs,” Forbes, October 4, 2012, http://www.forbes.com/sites/danschawbel/2012/10/04/; Jessica Hullinger, “Crowdfunding Clash: How Indiegogo Wants to Kick Kickstarter’s @$$,” Fiscal Times, May 30, 2014, http://thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/05/30. [>] Parenting is another domain: Diane Sonntag, “10 Golden Rules of Positive Parenting,” accessed July 31, 2014, http://www.babyzone.com/kids/positive-parenting_222185; Alyssa S.

Stolen: How to Save the World From Financialisation by Grace Blakeley

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, asset-backed security, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Basel III, basic income, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Big Tech, bitcoin, bond market vigilante , Bretton Woods, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, capitalist realism, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate raider, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, currency peg, David Graeber, debt deflation, decarbonisation, democratizing finance, Donald Trump, emotional labour, eurozone crisis, Extinction Rebellion, extractivism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, fixed income, full employment, G4S, gender pay gap, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global reserve currency, global supply chain, green new deal, Greenspan put, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, impact investing, income inequality, inflation targeting, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeremy Corbyn, job polarisation, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land value tax, light touch regulation, low interest rates, low skilled workers, market clearing, means of production, Modern Monetary Theory, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, neoliberal agenda, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, paradox of thrift, payday loans, pensions crisis, Phillips curve, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, post-war consensus, price mechanism, principal–agent problem, profit motive, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, Right to Buy, rising living standards, risk-adjusted returns, road to serfdom, Robert Solow, savings glut, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, sovereign wealth fund, the built environment, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, transfer pricing, universal basic income, Winter of Discontent, working-age population, yield curve, zero-sum game

I propose the creation of a People’s Asset Manager (PAM), which would act alongside the National Investment Bank outlined above to steadily socialise ownership in the economy as a whole, in the same way that many international investment banks also have asset management arms to allow them to take advantage of investment opportunities that arise from their lending activities. The PAM should contain a Citizen’s Wealth Fund (CWF), which would be capitalised using existing collective assets, and added to through tax revenues and the profits from the system of democratic finance.12 After several decades of almost continuous privatisation, the British state is relatively asset-poor. The Bank of England, however, owns a substantial amount of assets in the form of Treasuries — these could be used to capitalise the Citizen’s Wealth Fund as the Bank unwinds quantitative easing.

Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren't Fair (And What We Can Do About It) by William Poundstone

affirmative action, Albert Einstein, book value, business cycle, Debian, democratizing finance, desegregation, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, Everything should be made as simple as possible, global village, guest worker program, guns versus butter model, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, invisible hand, jimmy wales, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, manufacturing employment, Nash equilibrium, Paul Samuelson, Pierre-Simon Laplace, prisoner's dilemma, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, slashdot, the map is not the territory, Thomas Bayes, Tragedy of the Commons, transcontinental railway, Unsafe at Any Speed, Y2K

There is little doubt that the battery of analysts also paid close attention to the Nader spoiler effect. The Green left had elected Bush as surely as the religious right had. And beginning with the 2002 midterm elections, Republicans started aiding potential spoilers who might hurt Democrats. This trick, too, has a long history. I have already mentioned that the Democrats financed spoiler John St. John's New York campaign in 1884. The Republicans were accused of a similar tactic in the 1908 presidential race between William Taft and Democrat William Jennings Bryan. Socialist Eugene Debs, a potential spoiler, traveled the nation in 108 A un. Ralph . Ru n! Paper trails are for PUSSIES!

MegaThreats: Ten Dangerous Trends That Imperil Our Future, and How to Survive Them by Nouriel Roubini

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, 9 dash line, AI winter, AlphaGo, artificial general intelligence, asset allocation, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Bear Stearns, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, business process, call centre, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, cashless society, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, data is the new oil, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, decarbonisation, deep learning, DeepMind, deglobalization, Demis Hassabis, democratizing finance, Deng Xiaoping, disintermediation, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, eurozone crisis, failed state, fake news, family office, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial repression, fixed income, floating exchange rates, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, future of work, game design, geopolitical risk, George Santayana, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global reserve currency, global supply chain, GPS: selective availability, green transition, Greensill Capital, Greenspan put, Herbert Marcuse, high-speed rail, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, inflation targeting, initial coin offering, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge worker, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, M-Pesa, margin call, market bubble, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, meme stock, Michael Milken, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Mustafa Suleyman, Nash equilibrium, natural language processing, negative equity, Nick Bostrom, non-fungible token, non-tariff barriers, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, paradox of thrift, pets.com, Phillips curve, planetary scale, Ponzi scheme, precariat, price mechanism, price stability, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, reshoring, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, Savings and loan crisis, Second Machine Age, short selling, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, TED Talk, The Great Moderation, the payments system, Thomas L Friedman, TikTok, too big to fail, Turing test, universal basic income, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, Washington Consensus, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, working-age population, Yogi Berra, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game, zoonotic diseases

Their money just vanished into thin air, leaving behind debts and a commemorative sweatshirt with an image of the Fed chair as a Christ figure ringed in a halo of golden light, as the Times reported. “In place of the Bible, the gospel he holds declares, ‘Recession canceled, stocks only go up.’”10 Democratizing finance by easing access and lowering cost of credit opens floodgates that seldom get the scrutiny they deserve. In the early 2000s, consumers raced to buy homes with cheap debt. Detailed postmortems fill the six-hundred-page Financial Crisis Inquiry Report and many more accounts. Now thanks to low rates and trading apps that resemble video games, uninformed investors have new reasons and new ways to borrow.

You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All by Adrian Hon

"hyperreality Baudrillard"~20 OR "Baudrillard hyperreality", 4chan, Adam Curtis, Adrian Hon, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Astronomia nova, augmented reality, barriers to entry, Bellingcat, Big Tech, bitcoin, bread and circuses, British Empire, buy and hold, call centre, computer vision, conceptual framework, contact tracing, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, David Sedaris, deep learning, delayed gratification, democratizing finance, deplatforming, disinformation, disintermediation, Dogecoin, electronic logging device, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, fake news, fiat currency, Filter Bubble, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, Galaxy Zoo, game design, gamification, George Floyd, gig economy, GitHub removed activity streaks, Google Glasses, Hacker News, Hans Moravec, Ian Bogost, independent contractor, index fund, informal economy, Jeff Bezos, job automation, jobs below the API, Johannes Kepler, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, Lewis Mumford, lifelogging, linked data, lockdown, longitudinal study, loss aversion, LuLaRoe, Lyft, Marshall McLuhan, megaproject, meme stock, meta-analysis, Minecraft, moral panic, multilevel marketing, non-fungible token, Ocado, Oculus Rift, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, Parler "social media", passive income, payment for order flow, prisoner's dilemma, QAnon, QR code, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, r/findbostonbombers, replication crisis, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ronald Coase, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, scientific management, shareholder value, sharing economy, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, SimCity, Skinner box, spinning jenny, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, TED Talk, The Nature of the Firm, the scientific method, TikTok, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Twitter Arab Spring, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, urban planning, warehouse robotics, Whole Earth Catalog, why are manhole covers round?, workplace surveillance

YOUR SCORE IS YOUR BALANCE One of the most interesting video games that launched in 2020 was Hyperbolic Arcade Trading.42 It promised to teach players the fundamentals of trading and technical analysis by compressing an entire day’s trading into just two minutes, accompanied by an appropriately retro ’80s aesthetic. Hyperbolic Arcade Trading is far from the first to simulate stock markets, but one wonders whether it could be the last given the advent of Robinhood’s trading app. Robinhood launched in 2015 with the promise to “democratize” finance for retail investors (i.e., individual, nonprofessional investors), partly by means of commission-free trading, but also through a simplified interface filled with confetti and scratch-off cards and free stock giveaways.43 The company quickly attracted investment, and by late 2021 it had gained over eighteen million users, though not without running into a seemingly endless stream of controversies.44 Every trading service has its share of users who lose more money than they can afford; that there are Robinhood users with tales of woe is not surprising.

The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street by Justin Fox

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Abraham Wald, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Andrei Shleifer, AOL-Time Warner, asset allocation, asset-backed security, bank run, beat the dealer, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Big Tech, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black-Scholes formula, book value, Bretton Woods, Brownian motion, business cycle, buy and hold, capital asset pricing model, card file, Carl Icahn, Cass Sunstein, collateralized debt obligation, compensation consultant, complexity theory, corporate governance, corporate raider, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, democratizing finance, Dennis Tito, discovery of the americas, diversification, diversified portfolio, Dr. Strangelove, Edward Glaeser, Edward Thorp, endowment effect, equity risk premium, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental economics, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, fixed income, floating exchange rates, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Henri Poincaré, Hyman Minsky, implied volatility, impulse control, index arbitrage, index card, index fund, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, John Bogle, John Meriwether, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, libertarian paternalism, linear programming, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, low interest rates, mandelbrot fractal, market bubble, market design, Michael Milken, Myron Scholes, New Journalism, Nikolai Kondratiev, Paul Lévy, Paul Samuelson, pension reform, performance metric, Ponzi scheme, power law, prediction markets, proprietary trading, prudent man rule, pushing on a string, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, random walk, Richard Thaler, risk/return, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Robert Shiller, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, shareholder value, Sharpe ratio, short selling, side project, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, stocks for the long run, tech worker, The Chicago School, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Predators' Ball, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas L Friedman, Thorstein Veblen, Tobin tax, transaction costs, tulip mania, Two Sigma, Tyler Cowen, value at risk, Vanguard fund, Vilfredo Pareto, volatility smile, Yogi Berra

“They have made it possible for firms and institutions to deal efficiently and cost effectively with risks and hazards that have plagued them for decades, if not for centuries.”18 Steve Ross had predicted this happy result two decades earlier when he argued that the more different securities there were representing different potential states of the world, the closer we would get to the state of perfect economic equilibrium envisioned by his teacher Kenneth Arrow in the 1950s. One could see shades of Harry Markowitz in this argument, too. Give people more ways to invest in and hedge against the future, and they could decrease the riskiness of their portfolios. One didn’t even have to believe in the rational market to share in this worldview. “We need to democratize finance and bring the advantages enjoyed by the clients of Wall Street to the customers of Wal-Mart,” Robert Shiller opined. “We need to extend the domain of finance beyond that of physical capital to human capital, and to cover the risks that really matter in our lives.” Shiller proposed creating new derivatives that would enable people to hedge the risks of income loss, fluctuations in home prices, and falling GDP.

The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era by Gary Gerstle

2021 United States Capitol attack, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, anti-communist, AOL-Time Warner, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, borderless world, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Broken windows theory, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, collective bargaining, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crony capitalism, cuban missile crisis, David Brooks, David Graeber, death from overwork, defund the police, deindustrialization, democratizing finance, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, European colonialism, Ferguson, Missouri, financial deregulation, financial engineering, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, future of work, Future Shock, George Floyd, George Gilder, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, green new deal, Greenspan put, guns versus butter model, Haight Ashbury, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, Ida Tarbell, immigration reform, informal economy, invention of the printing press, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Jeff Bezos, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Kitchen Debate, low interest rates, Lyft, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, Menlo Park, microaggression, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, millennium bug, Modern Monetary Theory, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, mortgage debt, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, neoliberal agenda, new economy, New Journalism, Northern Rock, obamacare, Occupy movement, oil shock, open borders, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, Powell Memorandum, precariat, price stability, public intellectual, Ralph Nader, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Seymour Hersh, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, social distancing, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, Strategic Defense Initiative, super pumped, technoutopianism, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Chicago School, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, urban decay, urban renewal, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, We are all Keynesians now, We are the 99%, white flight, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration, Y2K, Yom Kippur War

et_rid=1773137024&s_campaign=todaysheadlines:newsletter; accessed December 10, 2021; Dee-Ann Durbin and Carolyn Thompson, “In a First for Starbucks, Workers Agree to Form Union,” Boston Globe, December 9, 2021, https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/12/09/business/first-starbucks-workers-agree-union-buffalo/, accessed December 10, 2021. 53.See, for example, Saule Omarova’s proposal to shift consumer deposit accounts from private banks to the Fed as a way of democratizing finance. Omarova, “The People’s Ledger.” See also Charles Lane, “Joe Biden Isn’t a Socialist but His Nominee to Regulate Banks Has Pretty Radical Ideas About the Fed,” Washington Post, October 13, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/13/joe-biden-isnt-socialist-his-nominee-regulate-banks-has-pretty-radical-ideas-about-fed/, accessed October 13, 2021.

Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown by Philip Mirowski

"there is no alternative" (TINA), Adam Curtis, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Roth, An Inconvenient Truth, Andrei Shleifer, asset-backed security, bank run, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Black Swan, blue-collar work, bond market vigilante , bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, Brownian motion, business cycle, capital controls, carbon credits, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, complexity theory, constrained optimization, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, dark matter, David Brooks, David Graeber, debt deflation, deindustrialization, democratizing finance, disinformation, do-ocracy, Edward Glaeser, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental economics, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Flash crash, full employment, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Greenspan put, Hernando de Soto, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, illegal immigration, income inequality, incomplete markets, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Jean Tirole, joint-stock company, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, l'esprit de l'escalier, labor-force participation, liberal capitalism, liquidity trap, loose coupling, manufacturing employment, market clearing, market design, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Naomi Klein, Nash equilibrium, night-watchman state, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, oil shock, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, Philip Mirowski, Phillips curve, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, precariat, prediction markets, price mechanism, profit motive, public intellectual, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, random walk, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, school choice, sealed-bid auction, search costs, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, Steven Levy, subprime mortgage crisis, tail risk, technoutopianism, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the map is not the territory, The Myth of the Rational Market, the scientific method, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thorstein Veblen, Tobin tax, tontine, too big to fail, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, working poor

Donald Westbrook (Out of the Crisis, p. 41) captures the incongruity: “if [Shiller], a tenured superstar at Yale with a reputation for intellectual originality, feels constrained to be orthodox, it seems a safe bet that most of what passes for financial policy is merely recycled.” Lo (“Reading About the Financial Crisis”) summarizes: Shiller proposes “democratizing finance—extending the application of sound financial principles to a larger and larger segment of society.” This follows from his theoretical premise: if bubbles are caused by the contagion of mistaken beliefs about economic outcomes, then the cure must be inoculation against further mistaken beliefs and eradication of currently mistaken ones.

Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought by Andrew W. Lo

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, algorithmic trading, Andrei Shleifer, Arthur Eddington, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, asset-backed security, backtesting, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Bob Litterman, Bonfire of the Vanities, bonus culture, break the buck, Brexit referendum, Brownian motion, business cycle, business process, butterfly effect, buy and hold, capital asset pricing model, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, computerized trading, confounding variable, corporate governance, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, delayed gratification, democratizing finance, Diane Coyle, diversification, diversified portfolio, do well by doing good, double helix, easy for humans, difficult for computers, equity risk premium, Ernest Rutherford, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental economics, experimental subject, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, Flash crash, Fractional reserve banking, framing effect, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Hans Rosling, Henri Poincaré, high net worth, housing crisis, incomplete markets, index fund, information security, interest rate derivative, invention of the telegraph, Isaac Newton, it's over 9,000, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Hawkins, Jim Simons, job satisfaction, John Bogle, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Meriwether, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, language acquisition, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, martingale, megaproject, merger arbitrage, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, mirror neurons, money market fund, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, Neil Armstrong, Nick Leeson, old-boy network, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), out of africa, p-value, PalmPilot, paper trading, passive investing, Paul Lévy, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, Phillips curve, Ponzi scheme, predatory finance, prediction markets, price discovery process, profit maximization, profit motive, proprietary trading, public intellectual, quantitative hedge fund, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, RAND corporation, random walk, randomized controlled trial, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Sam Peltzman, Savings and loan crisis, seminal paper, Shai Danziger, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanford prison experiment, statistical arbitrage, Steven Pinker, stochastic process, stocks for the long run, subprime mortgage crisis, survivorship bias, systematic bias, Thales and the olive presses, The Great Moderation, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Tobin tax, too big to fail, transaction costs, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, ultimatum game, uptick rule, Upton Sinclair, US Airways Flight 1549, Walter Mischel, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, WikiLeaks, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

Modern financial economics has replaced flashy stock-pickers and prognosticators with a much more transparent and systematic investment process. Successful technologies empower people to do things that they never imagined they could do for themselves, and this new financial technology is no different. It’s democratized finance but, as with all new technologies, it also brought new risks—as we’ll see in later chapters. WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU’RE EXPECTING Gene Fama had a second insight about the Efficient Markets Hypothesis: it has a split personality. The Efficient Markets Hypothesis is actually two hypotheses in one.

The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality From the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century by Walter Scheidel

agricultural Revolution, assortative mating, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, classic study, collective bargaining, colonial rule, Columbian Exchange, conceptual framework, confounding variable, corporate governance, cosmological principle, CRISPR, crony capitalism, dark matter, declining real wages, democratizing finance, demographic transition, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Downton Abbey, Edward Glaeser, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, fixed income, Francisco Pizarro, full employment, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, guns versus butter model, hiring and firing, income inequality, John Markoff, knowledge worker, land reform, land tenure, low skilled workers, means of production, mega-rich, Network effects, nuclear winter, offshore financial centre, plutocrats, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, rent control, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, Simon Kuznets, synthetic biology, The Future of Employment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, transaction costs, transatlantic slave trade, universal basic income, very high income, working-age population, zero-sum game

This was part of the Social Democrats’ commitment to ensure that the majority is liberated from dependence upon a few owners of capital, and the social order based on economic classes is replaced by a community of citizens cooperating on the basis of freedom and equality.45 The budget proposal for 1947 to 1948 provided for spending at more than twice the level a return to prewar levels would have entailed. Although some of it was earmarked for the war debt, it also allowed welfare to be stepped up. Tax rates came down a bit from their wartime peaks, but reductions in income tax were to be offset by higher taxes on wealth and estates, shifting more of the burden onto the wealthy. The Social Democratic finance minister Ernst Wigforss conceded that the estate tax would hurt the largest fortunes, citing America and Britain as models: the new top rate on inheritances was 47.5 percent, a 150 percent increase. The bill was discussed almost exclusively from a redistribution perspective, and debate was intense.

The Making of Global Capitalism by Leo Panitch, Sam Gindin

accounting loophole / creative accounting, active measures, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bilateral investment treaty, book value, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon credits, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, classic study, collective bargaining, continuous integration, corporate governance, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, dark matter, democratizing finance, Deng Xiaoping, disintermediation, ending welfare as we know it, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global value chain, guest worker program, Hyman Minsky, imperial preference, income inequality, inflation targeting, interchangeable parts, interest rate swap, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land reform, late capitalism, liberal capitalism, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, military-industrial complex, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, Myron Scholes, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, non-tariff barriers, Northern Rock, oil shock, precariat, price stability, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, scientific management, seigniorage, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, special economic zone, stock buybacks, structural adjustment programs, subprime mortgage crisis, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transcontinental railway, trickle-down economics, union organizing, vertical integration, very high income, Washington Consensus, We are all Keynesians now, Works Progress Administration, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

Indeed, Volcker himself thought the Europeans had not pushed the option of extending capital controls nearly as much as they should have.51 Those among the German political elite who were in favor of the temporary use of capital controls were in fact the most conservative and monetarist and the least oriented to the guiding principles of Bretton Woods; German Keynesians (above all the social democratic finance minister, Karl Schiller) were at one with US economists like Galbraith and Kindleberger in viewing capital controls as antithetical to liberal internationalism.52 In fact, among the nine leading industrialized countries, by 1973 Germany’s financial system was already the most liberalized.53 The fact was that, by this time, the degree of financial interpenetration among the leading capitalist states was such that controls would have had to be very extensive—and they could only have been imposed against the strong opposition of the most powerful sections of the European and Japanese capitalist classes.

The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War by Benn Steil

Albert Einstein, Alistair Cooke, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, currency manipulation / currency intervention, deindustrialization, democratizing finance, disintermediation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, foreign exchange controls, full employment, imperial preference, invisible hand, Kenneth Rogoff, kremlinology, land reform, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, new economy, open economy, Potemkin village, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, structural adjustment programs, the market place, trade liberalization, Transnistria, Winter of Discontent, Works Progress Administration, éminence grise

Seventy-four-year-old former PM Léon Blum, frail since his two-year Nazi incarceration, failed to muster a majority in the National Assembly to replace Ramadier. President Vincent Auriol, confiding to his diary that the country “was on the edge of the abyss,”43 turned to ascetic MRP (Christian Democrat) finance minister Robert Schuman. On a pledge to “defend the Republic,” Schuman secured the necessary majority on the 24th.44 Born in Luxembourg, educated in then-German Alsace, excused from German military service in World War I on health grounds, Schuman had only become “French” at the age of thirty-two.