Safe assets and shadow banking are two closely linked phenomena in contemporary finance. The link is loan securitisation: at a time of a global safe asset shortage, it falls on the shadow banking system to help make good that shortage by manufacturing extra quantities of asset backed securities....

This paper argues that the credit crunch is the result of a particular problem in the world financial system, that is, of the phenomenon of "liquidity illusion". At the heart of this still poorly under-stood phenomenon lies the spiral of financial innovation and its effects on systemic...

Modern monetary theory argues that all governments that issue their own currency have the same policy space. The present paper argues that this position is wrong. For it to be valid, abstraction must be made from the gravitational force of the US dollar that stems from its backing mass of...

The theory of the monetary circuit aims to provide a highly stylised account of the workings of a modern monetary production economy. While there may have been a time when it succeeded in this aim, that time is over. The key development in the monetary sphere of capitalism over recent decades is...

Recent decades have marked both the globalisation of capitalism following the collapse of communism and its financialisation following the rapid growth of the world's securities markets. These developments have impacted the core-periphery divide in capitalism. In the case of globalisation, the...

This paper argues that the conceptual framework of Marx's Capital allows for the extraction of a commodity-based theory of capitalist exploitation that is distinct from the traditional labour-value based theory. The rationale for extracting such a theory is that it allows for an explanation of...

This paper argues that the credit crunch is the result of a particular problem in the world financial system, that is, of the phenomenon of 'liquidity illusion.' At the heart of this still poorly under-stood phenomenon lies the spiral of financial innovation and its effects on systemic...