Keystroke Capitalism

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. -- Hanno Pahl, University of Bonn, Germany * Neue soziologische Beitrage zur Kapitalismusanalyse: Ein Einblick. In: Soziologische Revue 42 (3), S. 405-417. DOI: 10.1515/srsr-2019-0050 * 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. -- Stefan Freichel * Monetative Blog * 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'. -- Mathias Sonne * Information (Newspaper), DK * This book an accessible synthesis of a good deal of the literature, with interesting although by no means final political ideas. -- Wolfgang Streeck 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. -- Wolfgang Streeck 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. -- Ann Pettifor