New Books in Finance - podcast cover

New Books in Finance

Marshall Poe
Interviews with Scholars of Finance about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Episodes

Jerome Powell: “We don't think you're a straight shooter"

More than any one institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest rates are set by a committee, for almost a century, the Fed’s philosophy and operational approach have been moulded by one person: the Chair of the Board of Governors. In the first series of The Chair, Tim Gwynn Jones talked to authors of books about the Fed's foundational Chairs – Marriner Eccles, Bill Martin, Arthur Burns, and Paul Volcker. In this secon...

May 04, 202551 minEp. 177

Janet Yellen: “She had a view that the world was on fire”

More than any other single institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest rates are set by a committee, for almost a century, the Fed’s philosophy and operational approach have been moulded by one person: the Chair of the Board of Governors. In the first series of The Chair, Tim Gwynn Jones talked to authors of books about the Fed's foundational Chairs – Marriner Eccles, Bill Martin, Arthur Burns, and Paul Volcker. In t...

May 03, 20251 hrEp. 173

Ben Bernanke: “Like being a paleontologist”

More than any other single institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest rates are set by a committee, for almost a century, the Fed’s philosophy and operational approach have been moulded by one person: the Chair of the Board of Governors. In the first series of The Chair, Tim Gwynn Jones talked to authors of books about the Fed's foundational Chairs – Marriner Eccles, Bill Martin, Arthur Burns, and Paul Volcker. In t...

May 02, 202544 minEp. 172

Alan Greenspan: “The man who knew”

More than any other single institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest rates are set by a committee, for almost a century, the Fed’s philosophy and operational approach have been moulded by one person: the Chair of the Board of Governors. In the first series of The Chair, Tim Gwynn Jones talked to authors of books about the Fed's foundational Chairs – Marriner Eccles, Bill Martin, Arthur Burns, and Paul Volcker. In t...

May 01, 202549 minEp. 174

Jack Copley, "Governing Financialization: The Tangled Politics of Financial Liberalization in Britain" (Oxford UP, 2022)

One of the most distinctive aspects of global capitalism in the last half century or so has been the increased role of the financial sector in the global economy, especially in the advanced industrial economies of the Global North. The profitability and market capitalization of firms in the financial sector have increased immensely, firms that originated in the real economy have diversified into financial activities, cross-border financial flows have limited the policy autonomy of national gover...

Apr 30, 202545 minEp. 129

Nat Dyer, "Ricardo’s Dream: How Economists Forgot the Real World and Led Us Astray" (Bristol UP, 2024)

From the workings of financial markets to our response to the ecological crisis, economic theory shapes the world. But where do these ideas come from? Ricardo’s Dream: How Economists Forgot the Real World and Led Us Astray (Bristol University Press, 2024) tells the fascinating story of David Ricardo, Adam Smith’s only real rival as the ‘founder of economics’. The wealthiest stock trader of his day, Ricardo introduced the study of abstract models to economics. He also developed the theory of trad...

Apr 28, 20251 hr 21 min

Daryl Fairweather, "Hate the Game: Economic Cheat Codes for Life, Love, and Work" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

The secret insights of economics, translated for the rest of us. Should I buy or rent? Do I ask for a promotion? Should I tell people I’m pregnant? What salary do I deserve? Should I just quit this job? Common anxieties about life are often grounded in economics. In an increasingly win-lose society, these economic decisions—where to work, where to live, even how to live—have a way of feeling fixed and mistakes terminal. Daryl Fairweather is no stranger to these dynamics. As the first Black woman...

Apr 12, 202536 minEp. 170

John Kay, "The Corporation in the 21st Century: Why (Almost) Everything We Are Told about Business Is Wrong" (Yale UP, 2025)

John Kay's The Corporation in the 21st Century: Why (Almost) Everything We Are Told about Business Is Wrong (Yale UP, 2025) is an accessible and entertaining reappraisal of what business is for and how it works. Full of history and written in a compelling narrative style, this book describes a shift in the underlying assumptions of the relationship between capital & labor. Kay describes how and why we have come to "love the product" as we also "hate the producer". Kay discusses areas of particul...

Apr 09, 202555 minEp. 172

Jeffrey Lee Funk on Unicorns, Hype, and Bubbles

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with retired professor, consultant, Discovery Institute fellow, and a winner of the NTT DoCoMo Mobile Science Award, Jeffrey Lee Funk, about his recent book Unicorns, Hype, and Bubbles: A Guide to Spotting, Avoiding, and Exploiting Investment Bubbles in Tech (Harriman House, 2024). The book provides readers with fundamental tools for exploring technology markets and spotting financial bubbles, which have been recurring at a high rate in recent decades. In...

Mar 24, 202559 min

The Library of Mistakes: A Conversation with Russell Napier

The Library of Mistakes is a library located in Edinburgh, Scotland dedicated to financial and economic history. Russell Napier, the founder and keeper of the library is a professor at The Edinburgh Business School and investment manager. In this wide-ranging discussion, Russell discusses his work as a practitioner and a scholar of financial crises. He also discusses how and why he started a library, in addition to his writing on financial history. Professor Russell Napier is the author of The S...

Mar 10, 202555 minEp. 60

Kimberly Clausing, "Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital" (Harvard UP, 2019)

Critics on the Left have long attacked open markets and free trade agreements for exploiting the poor and undermining labor, while those on the Right complain that they unjustly penalize workers back home. In Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital (Harvard University Press, 2019), Kimberly Clausing takes on old and new skeptics in her compelling case that open economies are actually a force for good. Turning to the data to separate substance from spin, she sho...

Mar 08, 20251 hr 3 minEp. 170

Social Death by Debt: China's Lending Boom Reshapes Lives

China's household debt has exploded from 11% of GDP in 2006 to over 62% today—a profound transformation in a traditionally savings-focused society. How is this reshaping social relationships and daily life? In this episode, Dr. Jiaqi Guo from the University of Turku reveals findings from her corpus analysis of China's largest debt support forum. Her research uncovers the practice of "contact bombing" (爆通讯录), where collectors harass debtors' entire social networks, causing what Chinese debtors ca...

Mar 07, 202517 minEp. 239

Maria Kaika and Luca Ruggiero, "Class Meets Land: The Embodied History of Land Financialization" (U California Press, 2024)

Class Meets Land: The Embodied History of Land Financialization (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Maria Kaika & Dr. Luca Ruggiero reveals something seemingly counterintuitive: that nineteenth-century class struggles over land are deeply implicated in the transition to twenty-first-century financial capitalism. Challenging our understanding of land financialization as a recent phenomenon propelled by high finance, Dr. Kaika and Dr. Ruggiero foreground 150 years of class struggle over ...

Mar 06, 20251 hr 3 minEp. 123

Melinda Cooper, "Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance" (Zone Books, 2024)

At the close of the 1970s, government treasuries and central banks took a vow of perpetual self-restraint. To this day, fiscal authorities fret over soaring public debt burdens, while central bankers wring their hands at the slightest sign of rising wages. As the brief reprieve of coronavirus spending made clear, no departure from government austerity will be tolerated without a corresponding act of penance. Yet we misunderstand the scope of neoliberal public finance if we assume austerity to be...

Feb 18, 20251 hr 22 minEp. 60

Paul Podolsky, "The Uncomfortable Truth About Money: How to Live with Uncertainty and Learn to Think for Yourself" (Harriman House, 2024)

We are all stuck in a money cage. Money isn’t the most important thing, but it is a thing and you can’t get away from it. Birth costs money and death costs money. So even if you hate talking about money, you need to know the basics, the same way you need to know how to cook yourself a simple meal. The problem with most money books is that they are not written by practitioners and avoid hard truths. Paul Podolsky’s The Uncomfortable Truth About Money: How to Live with Uncertainty and Learn to Thi...

Feb 14, 202548 minEp. 169

Joel Z. Garrod, "Royal Histories: The Transformation of the Royal Bank of Canada, 1864-2022" (U Toronto Press, 2025)

In this engaging interview, young scholar Dr, Joel Z. Garrod explains his book's main argument, with a personal touch. In Royal Histories: The Transformation of the Royal Bank of Canada, 1864-2022 (U Toronto Press, 2025), Garrod presents a historical analysis of the Royal Bank of Canada, illustrating how Canadian capitalism and the Canadian banking industry have transformed as they have consolidated nationally and expanded abroad. Emphasizing how national institutions and rules are increasingly ...

Feb 01, 202558 minEp. 43

Lionel Barber, "Gambling Man: The Wild Ride of Japan’s Masayoshi Son" (Atria, 2024)

As Wall Street swooned and boomed through the last decade, our livelihoods have—now more than ever—come to rely upon the good sense and risk appetites of a few standout investors. And amidst the BlackRocks, Vanguards, and Berkshire Hathaways stands arguably the most iconoclastic of them all: SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son. In Gambling Man: The Wild Ride of Japan’s Masayoshi Son (Atria, 2024), the first Western biography of Son, the self-professed unicorn hunter, we go behind the scenes of the world’s ...

Feb 01, 202534 minEp. 167

Kim Pernell, "Visions of Financial Order: National Institutions and the Development of Banking Regulation" (Princeton UP, 2024)

The global financial crisis of the late 2000s was marked by the failure of regulators to rein in risk-taking by banks. And yet regulatory issues varied from country to country, with some national financial regulatory systems proving more effective than others. In Visions of Financial Order: National Institutions and the Development of Banking Regulation (Princeton University Press, 2024), Dr. Kim Pernell traces the emergence of important national differences in financial regulation in the decade...

Jan 31, 20251 hr 2 minEp. 25

Richard Vague, "The Paradox of Debt: A New Path to Prosperity Without Crisis" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023)

When we talk about debt and its impact on our economy, we almost always mean “government debt.” However, this is only a small part of the picture: individuals, private firms, and households owe trillions, and these private debts are vital to understanding the economy. In The Paradox of Debt: A New Path to Prosperity Without Crisis (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023), Richard Vague examines the assets, liabilities, and incomes of the entire country, private and public sector, to reveal its net worth. Hi...

Jan 31, 202540 minEp. 166

Rumu Sarkar, "International Development Law: Rule of Law, Human Rights & Global Finance" (Springer, 2020)

International Development Law: Rule of Law, Human Rights & Global Finance (Springer, 2020) describes how international development works, its shortcomings, its theoretical and practical foundations, along with prescriptions for the future. It provides the reader with new perspectives on the origins of global poverty, identifies legal impediments to sustainable economic growth, and provides a better understanding of the challenges faced by the international community in resolving global poverty i...

Jan 25, 202548 minEp. 237

Alan Bollard, "Economists in the Cold War: How a Handful of Economists Fought the Battle of Ideas" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Economists in the Cold War: How a Handful of Economists Fought the Battle of Ideas (Oxford UP, 2023) is an account of the economic drivers and outcomes of the Cold War, told through the stories of seven international economists, who were all closely involved in theory and policy in the period 1945-73. For them, the Cold War was a battle of economic ideas, a fight between central planning and market allocation, exploring economic thinking derived from the battle between Marxist and Capitalist ide...

Jan 25, 20251 hr 8 minEp. 120

Duncan Mavin, "Meltdown: Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse" (Pegasus Books, 2024)

Meltdown: Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse (Pegasus Books, 2024) is a great business history book. It meticulously chronicles the story of a large and once revered Swiss Bank, Credit Suisse, from its foundation in 1856 until how a series of scandals, driven by a culture of greed and entitlement among its bankers, led to the bank´s ultimate collapses in March 2023. The narrative also explores the bank's international expansion, particularly its partnership with First Boston in th...

Jan 19, 202539 minEp. 118

Edward Jones Corredera, "Odious Debt: Bankruptcy, International Law, and the Making of Latin America" (Oxford UP, 2024)

What are fallen tyrants owed? What makes debt illegitimate? And when is bankruptcy moral? Drawing on new archival sources, this book shows how Latin American nations have wrestled with the morality of indebtedness and insolvency since their foundation, and outlines how their history can shed new light on contemporary global dilemmas. With a focus on the early modern Spanish Empire and modern Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina, and based on archival research carried out across seven countries, Odiou...

Jan 10, 202548 minEp. 2

Austin Dean, "China and the End of Global Silver, 1873–1937" (Cornell UP, 2020)

In the late nineteenth century, as much of the world adopted some variant of the gold standard, China remained the most populous country still using silver. Yet China had no unified national currency; there was not one monetary standard but many. Silver coins circulated alongside chunks of silver and every transaction became an "encounter of wits." China and the End of Global Silver, 1873–1937 (Cornell UP, 2020) focuses on how officials, policy makers, bankers, merchants, academics, and journali...

Jan 05, 20251 hr 27 minEp. 12

Leah Downey, "Our Money: Monetary Policy as If Democracy Matters" (Princeton UP, 2024)

How the creation of money and monetary policy can be more democratic. The power to create money is foundational to the state. In the United States, that power has been largely delegated to private banks governed by an independent central bank. Putting monetary policy in the hands of a set of insulated, nonelected experts has fueled the popular rejection of expertise as well as a widespread dissatisfaction with democratically elected officials. In Our Money: Monetary Policy as If Democracy Matter...

Dec 25, 202440 minEp. 111

Melissa B. Jacoby, "Unjust Debts: How Our Bankruptcy System Makes America More Unequal" (New Press, 2024)

In theory, bankruptcy in America exists to cancel or restructure debts for people and companies that have way too many--a safety valve designed to provide a mechanism for restarting lives and businesses when things go wrong financially. In this brilliant and paradigm-shifting book, legal scholar Melissa B. Jacoby shows how bankruptcy has also become an escape hatch for powerful individuals, corporations, and governments, contributing in unseen and poorly understood ways to race, gender, and clas...

Dec 13, 202449 minEp. 235

Benjamin J. Shestakofsky on How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Benjamin Shestakofsky about his book, Behind the Startup: How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality (U California Press, 2024). Shestakofsky is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is affiliated with AI at Wharton and the Center on Digital Culture and Society. His research centers on how digital technologies are affecting work and employment, organizations, and economic exchange. Learn more abou...

Dec 09, 20241 hr 13 minEp. 85

Ken Wilcox, "The China Business Conundrum: Ensure That "Win-Win" Doesn't Mean Western Companies Lose Twice" (John Wiley & Sons, 2024)

The China Business Conundrum: Ensure That "Win-Win" Doesn't Mean Western Companies Lose Twice (Wiley, 2024) describes former CEO of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) Ken Wilcox's firsthand challenges he encountered in four years “on the ground” trying to establish a joint venture between SVB and the Chinese government to fund local innovation design―and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) efforts to systematically sabotage the project and steal SVB's business model. This book provides actionable advice dr...

Dec 01, 20241 hr 2 minEp. 164

The Secret Life of Central Bankers

This is the final episode of Cited’s most recent season, Use & Abuse of Economic Expertise, a season that tells stories of the political and scholarly battles behind the economic ideas that shape our world. For a full list of credits, and for the rest of the episodes, visit the series page. They will back with a new season focussed on environmental politics in early 2025, so make sure you are subscribed to the podcast (Apple, Spotify, manual RSS). The MAGA movement scores big wins by taking chea...

Nov 24, 20241 hr 12 minEp. 72
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