Author Description

The networks and institutions that support a finance-focused, market-centered model of economy and society from their intellectual roots through their ascendancy to their surprising resilience in the face of manifest failures are traced. The focus is on the quarter century, 1980-2006, leading to the global economic crisis and on the now decade-long crisis itself (2007-17). The approach uses political economy, with a focus on actors and their motives, the structures and resources that shaped them and that they in turn shaped, and the key events and turning points. The actors vary but come overwhelmingly from different branches of the power elite: investment bankers; finance ministers; bearers of dynastic wealth; college professors; government regulators; and central bankers. Their resources take many forms, from academic articles and white papers to cultural production, palace intrigue, and elections. A particular interest is taken in how the actors have mobilized institutions and networks to maintain the key tenets of the model despite the serious flaws indicated by the rise of inequality and the financial crises of both emerging and advanced economies at the dawn of the twenty-first century.