In various writings Karl Marx made references to an "aristocracy of finance" in Western Europe and the United States that dominated ownership of the public debt. Drawing on original research, this paper offers the first comprehensive analysis of the pattern of public debt ownership within the US...

In various writings Karl Marx made references to an ‘aristocracy of finance’ in Western Europe and the United States that dominated ownership of the public debt. Drawing on original research, this article offers the first comprehensive analysis of public debt ownership within the US...

The paper is devoted to an analysis of the Treaty on Stability Coordination and Governance (TSCG), also known as the "Fiscal Compact" Treaty signed between the EU member states in 2012. We argue than the TSCG, instead of helping to "repair" the institutional failures on which the Euro and the...

Within the context of the recent financial crisis, the causes and implications of mounting levels of household indebtedness have begun to be examined from a variety of angles: Why have nations differed so drastically, historically speaking, in terms of the level of debt that their citizens...

This paper examines the fiscal and monetary policy options available to China as a sovereign currency-issuing nation operating in a dollar standard world. We first summarize a number of issues facing China, including the possibility of slower growth, global imbalances, and a number of domestic...

We continue to struggle with the legacy of the 2008 financial crisis, which was fundamentally caused by the incurrence of too much leverage on the part of all economic participants, including individuals, private firms and financial institutions, and governments. Despite continued high...

This paper seeks to provide a new and chiefly monetary explanation for the origins of the sixteenth-century era of sustained inflation (c.1520 - c.1640) commonly known as the Price Revolution'; and in particular it provides an answer to the question: not, as traditionally posed, why did the...

The paper is devoted to an analysis of the Treaty on Stability Coordination and Governance (TSCG), also known as the "Fiscal Compact" Treaty signed between the EU member states in 2012. We argue than the TSCG, instead of helping to "repair" the institutional failures on which the Euro and the...