Real World Banking and Finance (8th edition)

Edited by Bill Barclay, Doug Orr, Mechthild Schrooten, Chris Sturr,
John Summa, and the Dollars & Sense Collective

What is money? Who controls the Fed? How does the stock market work? What is a bailout? What are hedge funds and private-equity firms? What are the causes and consequences of exchange-rate fluctuations? Real World Banking and Finance provides lively answers to these important questions. This clearly written, carefully researched anthology is an excellent supplementary text for introductory courses on money and banking.

Real World Banking and Finance helps students understand interest rates, the stock and bond markets, currencies and exchange rates, global financial institutions, retirement finance, mortgages and the housing market, regulatory reform, and much more.

The thoroughly updated eighth edition includes brand-new articles on cryptocurrencies, the Fed's response to the coronavirus crisis, the movement for public banking, a primer on financial derivatives, and much more.

Praise for Real World Banking & Finance:

"I thoroughly enjoy using Real World Banking in class. The readings allow students to critically appraise the conventional wisdom and traditionally sacrosanct institutions such as the Fed and the 'free market.'" —Kurt Keiser, School of Business, Adams State College

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Chapter 1: Money, The Federal Reserve, and the Economy
  • Introduction
  • 1.1 What is Money?
    Doug Orr
  • 1.2 The "Bond Market" Versus the Rest of Us
    Doug Orr and Ellen Frank
  • 1.3 The New Tools of the Fed
    John Miller
  • 1.4 Dollar Dominance
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 1.5 Is “MMT” an Answer for the United States? 
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 1.6 Cryptocurrencies Will Not Save Us
    Hadas Thier
    
    
• Chapter 2: Financialization and Neoliberalism
  • Introduction
  • 2.1 Financialization: A Primer 
    Ramaa Vasudevan
  • 2.2 The Origins and Crisis of Neoliberalism
    David Kotz
  • 2.3 Neoliberal Capitalism, Its Crisis, and What Comes Next
    David Kotz
  • 2.4 Financialization and Inequality
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 2.5 Financialization, Neoliberalism, and Neo-Fascism
    Gerald Epstein
  • 2.6 Neoliberalism as Neocolonialism
    Jayati Ghosh
    
    
• Chapter 3: The Banking and Finance Industry
  • Introduction
  • 3.1 From “Boring” Banking to “Roaring” Banking
    An Interview with Gerald Epstein
  • 3.2 Not Too Big Enough
    Rob Larson
  • 3.3 Big Bank Immunity: When Will We Crack Down?
    Dean Baker
  • 3.4 Hedge Funds
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 3.5 How Private Equity Works and Why It Matters
    Eileen Applebaum and Rosemary Batt
    
    
• Chapter 4 · Financialization And the Rest of the Economy
  • Introduction
  • 4.1 Boeing Hijacked by Shareholders and Execs!
    Marie Christine Duggan
  • 4.2 Monetary Policy, Financialization, and the Loss of U.S. Manufacturing Jobs
    Marie Christine Duggan
  • 4.3 Rising Asset Bubbles Distort the Industrial Base
    Marie Christine Duggan
  • 4.4 Diamond Turning Innovation in the Age of Impatient Finance
    Marie Christine Duggan
  • 4.5 The Bankruptcy Games
    Bill Barclay
  • 4.6 Caring by the Dollar: Nursing Homes, Private Equity, and Covid-19
    Bill Barclay
    
    
• Chapter 5: Financial Markets
  • Introduction
  • 5.1 The Big Casino: How to Rein In Stock Market Speculation
    Doug Orr
  • 5.2 The Lure of “Democratizing” Finance
    John Summa
  • 5.3 “Pressure from the Bond Market”
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 5.4 Transaction Tax: Sand in the Wheels, Not in the Face
    John Miller
  • 5.5 The Stock Market and the Coronavirus Crisis
    John Miller
  • 5.6 Concentration of Stock Ownership
    Ed Ford
  • 5.7 Stock Buybacks: Any Positive Outcome?
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 5.8 Is “Short Selling” Bad for the Economy?
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 5.9 From Public Meat Markets to Derivatives Markets
    Polly Cleveland
  • 5.10 From Grain Futures to the Great Financial Crisis and Beyond
    Bill Barclay
  • 5.11 Risky Business: Derivatives and Global Agriculture
    Sasha Breger Bush
  • 5.12 The Swaps Crisis
    Darwin Bond Graham
    
    
• Chapter 6: Financial Crises
  • Introduction
  • 6.1 Crisis and Neoliberal Capitalism
    David Kotz
  • 6.2 We’re All Minskyites Now
    Robert Pollin
  • 6.3 Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble: Keynes and Financial Instability
    Alejandro Reuss
  • 6.4 That ’70s Crisis
    Alejandro Reuss
  • 6.5 Inexcusable: “Dr. Phil’s” Financial Recession
    John Miller
  • 6.6 The Greed Fallacy
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 6.7 What Were the Bankers Thinking?
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 6.8 Securitization, the Bubble, and the Crisis
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 6.9 The Bailouts Revisited
    Marty Wolfson
  • 6.10 How Have Banks Managed to Repay the Bailout?
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 6.11 The Fed and the Coronavirus Crisis
    Gerald Epstein and John Miller
  • 6.12 The Coronavirus Consensus: Spend, Spend, Spend
    Gerald Epstein
  • 6.13 It’s Time to Ditch “Pay-For” Politics
    Yeva Nersisyan and L. Randall Wray
  • 6.14 Inflation Is Surging: Round Up the Usual Scapegoats
    John Miller
    
    
• Chapter 7: Debt and Finance
  • Introduction
  • 7.1 A Primer on Debt
    Bruce Parry
  • 7.2 The Debt Delusion: Living Within Our Means and Other Fallacies
    John F. Weeks
  • 7.3 Three Million Americans Are Debt Poor
    Steven Pressman and Robert Scott
  • 7.4 The Corinthian Crisis
    Christopher J. Cooper
  • 7.5 The Student Loan Crisis and the Debtfare State
    Susanne Soederberg
  • 7.6 Why Is Student Debt Cancellation a Big Deal?
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 7.7 Puerto Rico’s Colonial Debt
    José A. Laguarta Ramírez
    
    
• Chapter 8: Mortgages, Consumer Credit, and Predatory Lending
  • Introduction
  • 8.1 America’s Growing Fringe Economy
    Howard Karger
  • 8.2 Inside the World of Check-Cashing
    Debora M. Figart and Thomas Barr
  • 8.3 The Housing Bubble Was No Accident
    Doug Orr
  • 8.4 The Great Recession in Black Wealth
    Jeannette Wicks-Lim
  • 8.5 Libor Rigging Redux
    John Summa
  • 8.6 Ponzi Schemes and Speculative Bubbles
    Arthur MacEwan
    
    
• Chapter 9: Retirement Finance
  • 9.1 Social Security Q & A: Separating Fact from Fiction
    Doug Orr
  • 9.2 African Americans and Social Security
    William E. Spriggs
  • 9.3 The $17 Trillion Delusion
    Marty Wolfson
  • 9.4 Resusitating Private Social Security Accounts
    John MIller
  • 9.5 Selling Out Workers and Retirees to Their Financial Advisers
    John MIller
  • 9.6 What Happened to Defined-Benefit Pensions?
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 9.7 Detroit’s Bankruptcy Crisis: Pensions in the Balance
    Katherine Sciacchitano
  • 9.8 Why We Need Universal Pensions
    Katherine Sciacchitano
    
    
• Chapter 10: The International Financial System
  • 10.1 The Giant Pool of Money
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 10.2 SWIFT, the U.S. Dollar, and the Global Political Economy of Trade
    Bill Barclay
  • 10.3 Microcredit and Women’s Poverty
    Susan F. Feiner and Drucilla K. Barker
  • 10.4 Ex-Im Bank: Crony Capitalism, or Plain-Old Capitalism?
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 10.5 The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank
    The D&S Collective
  • 10.6 No Blank Check for Development Banks
    Kevin P. Gallagher and Jorg Haas
  • 10.7 Financing Needs of Developing Countries
    Esra Uğurlu
    
    
• Chapter 11: Resistance and Alternatives
  • 11.1 A Case for Public Ownership
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 11.2 The Public Banking Alternative
    Rick Girling
  • 11.3 Financing the New Economy
    Abby Scher
  • 11.4 Leveraging Financial Markets for Social Justice
    Doug Orr
  • 11.5 Making Carbon Visible to Investors (and Us!)
    Doug Orr
  • 11.6 Underbanked and Overcharged
    Deborah M. Figart
  • 11.7 Taking the Blinders Off
    Susan Schroeder