Stefan Eich

Such terrible terrible news that Perry Mehrling has passed. Hard to describe how much he taught us all. And such a wonderfully curious interlocutor. I recently returned to his brilliant & mischievous "Financialization and its discontents". Great primer. sites.bu.edu/perry/files/...

Stefan Eich: "It is never the case that money ceases to be political but merely that it is removed from democratic politics." I just finished Eich's book, not necessarily an easy read, but an important book on why money should not be left to economists and central bankers.

From our FirstView: "What Would It Mean to Democratize Finance? An Evaluation of Divergent Conceptions of Democracy and Finance" by Leah Downey and Stefan Eich, @stefeich.bsky.social. buff.ly/pPVH3mv

I love the reference to faux-democratization as “predatory inclusion.” It’s perfect! 👏🏽 Stefan & Leah. “We argue that conceptions that reduce democratization to expanded market access are not merely insufficient but, when applied to speculative capital markets, amount to predatory inclusion.”

🗑️🔥

New article just dropped in APSR! Leah Downey and yours truly on why people should stop using “democratize” when all they really mean is increasing market access. (Looking at you, economists! 👀) And, more positively, what a better vision of “democratization” looks like when applied to finance.

@stefeich.bsky.social and @adamtooze.bsky.social argue in their substack that Keynes & Mann both wanted to save the "thin crust of civilisation" by trying to convince the bourgeoisie that one can and should imagine a radically better future. adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-...

Adam Tooze (@adamtooze.bsky.social) & I have been looking for Dr Faustus in expected places. Here are our musings on Thomas Mann, Keynes, magic, and alchemy. "The Last of the Magicians: Thomas Mann, John Maynard Keynes and the Alchemy of Bourgeois Liberalism" adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-...

Ein sofortiger Klassiker! 🪨🔥

Es ist da! Es geht um Aufstieg, Niedergang und Nachleben der fossilen Moderne; um moderne Geschichte als Naturgeschichte; um die materielle Vermittlung des Sozialen durch Kapital und Kohlenstoff; um Kritik an sozialen Verhältnissen, die buchstäblich Natur geworden sind. shorturl.at/FJnFc

The Democratic Politics of Monetary Design Vortrag von @stefeich.bsky.social (www.stefaneich.com), per Video zugeschaltet zur Ringvorlesung "𝗗𝗶𝗲 𝗭𝘂𝗸𝘂𝗻𝗳𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝘀 𝗚𝗲𝗹𝗱𝗲𝘀" an der @tuda.bsky.social 🗓 15.7.2026, 18 Uhr 📍 TU Darmstadt, Großer Hörsaal im Schloss (S 313/30) 🔗 zevedi.de/ringvorlesun...

My book Against Money, coauthored with Arjun Jayadev, is coming out from University of Chicago Press on May 5. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

This Friday! Don’t forget to RSVP @natashalennard.bsky.social @joncatlin.bsky.social

Join us next Friday at 12:30pm at the Remarque Institute (@remarquenyu.bsky.social)! SEYLA BENHABIB ON AT THE MARGINS OF THE MODERN STATE: CRITICAL THEORY AND LAW as.nyu.edu/research-cen...

ICYMI: "Critical Theory of Finance" Wendy Brown, Stefan Eich, Aaron Benanav and Paul North discuss the separation of #capital from the productive #economy and #finance as an abstraction. #Philosophy #CriticalTheory Please like and subscribe on YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo6j...

Read @stefeich.bsky.social press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...

Coming up: Mon. Mar. 9 ~ 12:15pm ET / 4:15pm UK "Critical Theory of Finance Wendy Brown, Melinda Cooper, Stefan Eich and Aaron Benanev in conversation with Paul North On the effects of the enormous shift around who has economic control. #Philosophy www.tickettailor.com/events/theph...

This year I made two big changes to my graduate International Political Economy syllabus: 1) I leaned in to money and capital as organizing themes, and 2) I assigned (nearly) all books. Here's our reading list, ft. Karl Polanyi, Benjamin Cohen, @stefeich.bsky.social, Ngaire Woods, J.C. Sharman ...

We are delighted to share this fascinating Watson School of International and Public Affairs Podcast with Leah Downey, author of Our Money: Monetary Policy as if Democracy Matters. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysMz... #money #democracy #economics #policy

It's not as simple as central bank independence good, political involvement bad. As highlighted in our conversation with Stefan Eich. @stefeich.bsky.social

excited to have a research note for DERISK, co-authored with my two amazing post-docs Virginia De Biasio and Robert Reamer. In the note, we outline some of the threats posed by systemic risks to democracy and discuss a potential pathway forward. Check it out here: www.derisk.org.uk/working-papers

The Rhodes Center Podcast is back. Me and Leah Downey on her wonderful book Our Money: Monetary Policy as if Democracy Matters. This is part one of two. In part two we discuss what happens when democracy starts to get the upper hand. Coming soon: player.captivate.fm/episode/eb5e...

Bailey’s obsession w/ quantitative tightening should be a *much* more important story in any account of what’s going on w/ UK gilts. But, perversely, if a Chancellor were to point out that the Bank of England wields quasi-fiscal powers, this would be seen as a violation of central bank independence

@rlspang.bsky.social provides lots of details here on the politics of recent goldsilverbuggery. Also helpful: this article from a few years ago by @stefeich.bsky.social on crypto and the politics of depoliticization: academic.oup.com/book/36505/c...

Very exciting to see that my book has its own page on the SUP website now Should be hitting shelves in October! www.sup.org/books/theory...

Tim is writing the first draft of history ya'll, if you aren't already reading Polycrisis religiously you need to get on that.

Heartening to see the spirit of Keynes channeled in today’s Letters to the FT. The CB rush to gold is far darker than portfolio diversification. It represents an admission of international institutional collapse and a tragic shift into unproductive hoarding. Bravo Vishnu Nair!

Appropriately perhaps, today is the birthday of Maynard Keynes, Britain's greatest ever financial warrior: 142 years young today. #AgeofMammonandMars

What does de-risked decarbonization mean for state capacity across sectors? I am THRILLED that this article is now out in @ripejournal.bsky.social! 🔓 Current climate finance regimes lock in lopsided transitions - states need resources for unbankable transitions. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Thanks for reading! Actually working on some projects on “counterfeit democracy” (including of the crypto variety) with Leah Downey, whose recent excellent book you might also appreciate.

Bloch: “I believe, Teddy, that we are certainly in agreement here: the essential function of utopia is a critique of what is present. If we had not already gone beyond the barriers, we could not even perceive them as barriers.”

Hi folks! Discount code incoming for my new book Contested Territory: A Theory of Land and Democracy beyond Sovereign Bounds.

For what it’s worth, I still think one of the best studies of the late Alasdair MacIntyre & his thought is this 2005 intellectual biography by Emile Perreau-Saussine (now translated into English) undpress.nd.edu/978026820325... @mattpolprof.bsky.social @thecambridgeschool.bsky.social

I'm just going to throw this book by @stefeich.bsky.social into the ring, as I think it talks about the most important aspect of money fundamental at play here: "... to show how money is not just a medium of exchange but also a central institution of political rule."

This bespoke exception for the Fed is one of the most brazenly made-up things I've ever seen the Supreme Court do (which is saying something). There is no principled basis to distinguish the Fed from other independent agencies. The conservative justices just don't want Trump to crash the market!

Did I mention that ABSOLUTE ETHICAL LIFE includes a terrific chapter on Alasdair MacIntyre?!? "[MacIntyre’s] journey from Marxism is less a reactionary departure and more a story of his thinking through of modernity in terms already indicated in his earlier Marxist work."

Congrats to Stefan Eich @stefeich.bsky.social‬ on winning the 2024 David and Elaine Spitz Prize from the International Conference for the Study of Political Thought (CSPT)! press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Kind words from a fantastic editor and theorist — it was great pleasure to work with Stefan

Be sure to get your hands on this beautiful book! Michael Lazarus’s ABSOLUTE ETHICAL LIFE is at once magisterial & elegant, profound & written from the heart. This will be a classic. Out in paperback in our SUP series on June 3. Congrats @michaellazarus.bsky.social! www.sup.org/books/politi...

In my article “Future Theft” I argue that fossil capitalization relies on a temporally inverted form of “original accumulation” (Marx) and ask if and how climate reparations can help to reclaim the stolen future. Open Access here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Very excited to announce the first drop of a Special Issue Alain Pottage ‪@sciencespo.bsky.social‬ and I edit for ‪@theoryculturesociety.org‬ on “Planetary Property". Together with our brilliant contributors we seek to advance ecological critiques of property. journals.sagepub.com/toc/TCS/0/0

11/ Choose your climate future. Our political/social/econ choices over coming years will determine how severe consequences will be. Politics of who wins & loses,& how ppl & nations make justice @iliasalami.bsky.social & I chat about the Geo in Geo-Politics. thedigradio.com/podcast/new-...

Für John Maynard Keynes sollte wirtschaftliches Wachstum das moralische und politische Leben verändern. Seine Ökonomik war so widersprüchlich wie produktiv.

The Cambridge Graduate Conference in Political Thought and Intellectual History will take place on 24 June 2025 at 9am. To register, please click this link: ptih-graduate-conference.eventbrite.co.uk Visit our website for more details: www.polthought.cam.ac.uk/future-event...

Shortlist for the first Climate Fiction Prize has just been announced @climate-fiction.bsky.social - short thread