As financial markets and central banks oversee an increasingly fraught global economy marked by inflationary pressures, looming recessions, and higher interest rates, critiques of the contemporary financial architecture have begun to emerge from both the Left and the Right. What may have once been seen as a purely technocratic endeavor has now spilled out onto the political frontlines. What is the current state of contemporary finance and what are some of the possible alternatives? What are the different class interests underlying emergent responses to financial instability and how may political movements articulate their visions for alternative financial systems?

Michael A. McCarthy is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Marquette University and current Berggruen Fellow. Much of his work is on power and finance. He is the author of the award-winning book, Dismantling Solidarity: Capitalist Politics and American Pensions since the New Deal (Cornell University Press, 2017), and a contributor to Democratizing Finance: Restructuring Credit to Transform Society (Verso Press, 2022). View his website here.

Lenore Palladino is assistant professor in the School of Public Policy and the Department of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a research associate at the UMass Amherst Political Economy Research Institute, as well as a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. Her research centers on corporate power, stakeholder corporations, shareholder primacy, and the relationship between corporate governance and the labor market. She is also a contributor to Democratizing Finance: Restructuring Credit to Transform Society (Verso Press, 2022). View her website here.

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