Syllabus: Money for Mad Scientists

I was looking for books that represent the best of academic research: wild, radical ideas, great writing, rigorous theory that helps to explain the most important problems of our age. I wanted books written by mad scientists.

So, despite it feeling like a departure from the things I’m writing about now, I picked up Gustav Peebles and Benjamin Luzzatto’s The First and Last Bank: Climate Change, Currency, and a New Carbon Commons. In it, they argue that we should create community banks to sequester carbon the way that gold was hoarded in response to the gold standard. It’s a crazy idea, but they draw on theories of banking, money, and religion, not to mention forest ecosystems and so much more, to make a compelling case for a banking solution to climate change.

As is apparently a trend with this Substack, I haven’t finished reading this book yet, but I wanted to put together the first of my public syllabi in case anyone is interested in reading along with me. In my attempt to better understand Peebles and Luzzatto’s arguments, I put together my own curriculum of long-deferred reading, which is bringing me back to my origins as an economic anthropologist.

First, I read The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton, which came out in 2020 to much debate. It’s the book that really took Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) out of the confines of the heterodox economics world and introduced it to the general public. Whatever you might think about MMT, it introduces an important way of understanding the options currency issuing governments like the US have for managing their budgets. It also helped me begin to understand money better.

To go deeper into theories of money, I’m now making my way through Anush Kapadia’s A Political Theory of Money and Christine Desan’s Making Money.

While many people treat MMT as though it is a far left approach, Melinda Cooper argues that proponents of MMT always pull back from the edge of truly radical wealth redistribution. Her book Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance helps to explain some of the history around the economic theory story that Kelton tells in The Deficit Myth.

In my dream about my bookstore, I’d want to have events every month or two to discuss and make sense of these syllabi: public education courses. If you would be interested in an event about money, either virtually or in person in New York City this summer, let me know.