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Money 5,000 years of debt and power

Author

Listed:
  • Michel Aglietta

    (CEPII - Centre d'Etudes Prospectives et d'Informations Internationales - Centre d'analyse stratégique, EconomiX - EconomiX - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Pepita Ould Ahmed

    (CESSMA UMRD 245 - Centre d'études en sciences sociales sur les mondes africains, américains et asiatiques - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - Inalco - Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales - UPD7 - Université Paris Diderot - Paris 7)

  • Jean-François Ponsot

    (CREG - Centre de recherche en économie de Grenoble - UGA [2016-2019] - Université Grenoble Alpes [2016-2019])

Abstract

As the financial crisis reached its climax in September 2008, the most important figure on the planet was Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke. The whole financial system was collapsing, with little to stop it. When a senator asked Bernanke what would happen if the central bank did not carry out its rescue package, he replied, "If we don't do this, we may not have an economy on Monday." What saved finance, and the Western economy, was fiscal and monetary stimulus – an influx of money, created ad hoc. It was a strategy that raised questions about the unexamined nature of money itself, an object suddenly revealed as something other than a neutral signifier of value. Through its grip on finance and the debt system, money confers sovereign power on the economy. If confidence in money is not maintained, crises follow. Looking over the last 5,000 years, Michel Aglietta explores the development of money and its close connection to sovereign power. This book employs the tools of anthropology, history and political economy in order to analyse how political structures and monetary systems have transformed one another. We can thus grasp the different eras of monetary regulation and the crises capitalism has endured throughout its history.

Suggested Citation

  • Michel Aglietta & Pepita Ould Ahmed & Jean-François Ponsot, 2018. "Money 5,000 years of debt and power," Post-Print halshs-02090645, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-02090645
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    Cited by:

    1. N/A, 2019. "Books Received: (current as of Spring 2019)," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 51(1), pages 173-176, March.
    2. Lagoarde-Segot, Thomas & Martínez, Enrique A., 2021. "Ecological finance theory: New foundations," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    3. Ament, Joe, 2020. "An ecological monetary theory," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    4. Eduardo Ferraciolli & Tanya Araújo, 2023. "Agent-based Modeling and the Sociology of Money: a Framework for the Study of Coordination and Plurality," Working Papers REM 2023/0285, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, REM, Universidade de Lisboa.
    5. Steffen Murau & Armin Haas & Andrei Guter-Sandu, 2024. "Monetary architecture and the Green Transition," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 56(2), pages 382-401, March.
    6. Tallgauer, Maximilian & Schank, Christoph, 2024. "Challenging the growth-prosperity Nexus: Redefining undergraduate economics education for the Anthropocene," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 216(C).

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