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The People's Money: The Case for Public Banking in the United States, offers a broad account and analysis of the most radical policy proposal of the populist movement: a new monetary currency issued by a public banking system. Nineteenth century American populists proposed a radical theory of sovereign money creation through public banking. Money would be issued as loans based on collateral to individuals at local public banks, much as it is created by private banks in the existing banking system. Public banking, however, would operate as a non-profit community service. Usurious rates would be replaced by 1% fixed interest, corresponding to the natural rate of resource depreciation over a lifetime. The populist idea of a natural rate of interest represents an intriguing confluence of ecological and monetary thinking.The populists argued that democracy requires economic security that only property ownership can provide. In shifting the benefits of credit from lenders to borrowers, they aimed to promote widespread ownership of property. They opposed all monopolies of property, especially those of private finance. Unlike socialists, who favored collective control over production, populists sought to reform capitalism by widely distributing credit among individuals. With exorbitant rates of interest eliminated, borrowers would be freed of the servitude to creditors demanded by excessive interest rates. They would retain, perhaps for the first time in history, the full benefit of their loans for themselves and their families.

This book explains how central banks, banks and governments create money. Written in an accessible style, this book provides an introduction to modern monetary theory without requiring any prior knowledge of economics. It covers the most important aspects of monetary theory, including inflation targeting, government spending, and international trade, as well as economic policy to achieve macroeconomic goals, such as price stability, full employment and sustainable use of resources. Accordingly, it offers a valuable asset for students of economics, central bankers, banking professionals, and academics alike.

In recent decades, the historical social sciences have moved away from deterministic perspectives and increasingly embraced the interpretive analysis of historical process and social and political change. This shift has enriched the field but also led to a deadlock regarding the meaning and status of subjective knowledge. Cultural interpretivists struggle to incorporate subjective experience and the body into their understanding of social reality. In the early twentieth century, philosopher Alfred Schutz grappled with this very issue. Drawing on Edmund Husserl's phenomenology and Max Weber's historical sociology, Schutz pioneered the interpretive analysis of social life from an embodied perspective. However, the recent interpretivist turn, influenced by linguistic philosophies, discourse theory, and poststructuralism, has overlooked the insights of Schutz and other phenomenologists. This book revisits Schutz's phenomenology and social theory, positioning them against contemporary problems in social theory and interpretive social science research. The book extends Schutz's key concepts of relevance, symbol relations, theory of language, and lifeworld meaning structures. It outlines Schutz's critical approach to the social distribution of knowledge and develops his nascent sociology and political economy of knowledge. This book will appeal to readers with interests in social theory, phenomenology, and the methods of interpretive social science, including historical sociology, cultural sociology, science and technology studies, political economy, and international relations.

How new technology is rapidly changing the nature of money and the way we payA diverse and growing range of financial institutions and platforms—from PayPal and Venmo to WeChat, Alipay, and the brave new world of stablecoins—has harnessed new technology to disrupt the system of money and payments as we know it. Beyond Banks explains why this disruption holds out the promise of faster, cheaper, more convenient, and more secure payments, but also how it increasingly risks exposing consumers, businesses, and governments to the problem of bad money.Dan Awrey traces the origins of our current bundled system of banking, money, and payments. He explains why the problem of bad money—the result of antiquated and inadequate laws and regulation that fail to establish credible commitments to hold, transfer, or return a customer's money on demand—requires that policymakers fundamentally rethink their approach toward the design of the laws and institutions at the heart of this system. He presents ways to effectively unbundle banking from money and payments, ensure the credibility of monetary commitments, and promote the stability of this system. Awrey also envisions a more forward-looking role for policymakers in encouraging greater technological experimentation, competition, and innovation in the realm of payments.Beyond Banks sheds critical light on the important but too often dysfunctional relationship among technology, regulation, and money, and lays the foundations for a safer, more nimble, and more inclusive system of money and payments.

This Companion is a comprehensive introduction to Modern Money Theory (MMT), covering a wide variety of topics from the nature and origins of money, to the fundamentals of government spending and taxation, to the application of MMT in developed and developing countries.Bringing together prominent MMT economists, The Elgar Companion to Modern Money Theory analyzes the crucial contemporary issues of financing the green transition, aging and social security, and job guarantee programs. Authors discuss government debt in the modern money system, the dynamics of fiscal deficits and debt, resource constraints, and macroeconomic policy. This forward-thinking Companion constructively responds to MMT critiques, advocating for the use of MMT principles to devise more effective and sustainable development policies for the future.This book is a crucial resource for students, academics, and researchers specializing in economics, political economics, political science, and the social sciences more broadly. Discussing practical examples alongside theory and related critique, The Elgar Companion to Modern Money Theory is also invaluable for economic policymakers and practitioners.

The Interwar World collects an international group of over 50 contributors to discuss, analyze, and interpret this crucial period in twentieth-century history. A comprehensive understanding of the interwar era has been limited by Euro-American approaches and strict adherence to the temporal limits of the world wars. The volume's contributors challenge the era's accepted temporal and geographic framings by privileging global processes and interactions. Each contribution takes a global, thematic approach, integrating world regions into a shared narrative.Three central questions frame the chapters. First, when was the interwar? Viewed globally, the years 1918 and 1939 are arbitrary limits, and the volume explicitly engages with the artificiality of the temporal framework while closely examining the specific dynamics of the 1920s and 1930s. Second, where was the interwar? Contributors use global history methodologies and training in varied world regions to decenter Euro-American frameworks, engaging directly with the usefulness of the interwar as both an era and an analytical category. Third, how global was the interwar? Authors trace accelerating connections in areas such as public health and mass culture counterbalanced by processes of economic protectionism, exclusive nationalism, and limits to migration. By approaching the era thematically, the volume disaggregates and interrogates the meaning of the ‘global'in this era.As a comprehensive guide, this volume offers overviews of key themes of the interwar period for undergraduates, while offering up-to-date historiographical insights for postgraduates and scholars interested in this pivotal period in global history.