Keystroke Capitalism: How Banks Create Money for the Few(Verso Futures)

Contemporary capitalism produces more and more money, debt, and inequality. These three trends have a common cause: the privilege of private banks to create money by means of accounting - by the stroke of a key. Why was this privilege not addressed politically for so long - and who benefited from it? At the heart of the answer lies the realization that the power to create money has been hidden by the way we commonly think and talk about capitalism. The book traces the omission of money creation from theories of capitalism and maps its consequences. By expanding the manoeuvring space for the banks to use their privilege, the capitalist countries have financed a transformation of the economy known as financialization. As a result, the real economy and private households became a debt supplier to a monetary system whose returns accumulate at the top. It is not simply "the markets" but money itself that transfers economic benefits from the masses to a minority. Increasing inequality of income and wealth can therefore only be combated if one does not only correct distributive results of markets-redistribution-, but addresses predistribution: the modalities of money creation.

About the Author :
Aaron Sahr is a philosopher turned economic sociologist. He is visiting professor at Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany, and head of the research group "Monetary Sovereignty" at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research. His research interests include the sociology of money, facts and fictions about monetary policy, the history of capitalism, inequality, and social ontology.

Review :
In the money-creation privilege of private banks, Aaron Sahr discovers a precarious mechanism of inequality reinforcement to which the regulation of capitalist economic activity has paid far too little attention to date. Sahr has successfully identified the structures that privilege so few and put so many at a disadvantage. The way in which the author presents these issues, unravels the connections and structures, and elucidates the illegitimacy of the money-production privilege adds up to an outstanding piece of sociological scholarship. The uncontrolled creation of money by private banks should interest us all, because it creates a permanent redistribution from the poor to the rich, says the highly interesting 'Keystroke Capitalism'. This book an accessible synthesis of a good deal of the literature, with interesting although by no means final political ideas. Aaron Sahr's book provides a highly accessible synthesis of the state of knowledge on modern money and how it affects the political economy. Readers learn about the nature of fiat money and fiat credit and their contribution the financialization of contemporary capitalism, the conflicts it generates, and the consequences for the state and public policy. Why and how did a company with a huge cash pile in the bank - Apple Inc - set out to borrow $17 billion in 2013? How did the world's billionaire class accumulate $418 trillion US dollars - an amount five times world income - in the blink of an eye? The answers can be found in this admirably accessible book on the way the globalised, private financial system generates 'keystroke wealth' and 'keystroke capital gains' - but also its nemesis - 'keystroke debt'. A must-read for all those fretting about the likely next crisis in the evolution of financialised capitalism.