Leviathan financialized?

Abstract

AbstractIn The Rise of Central Banks, Leon Wansleben provides a perceptive account of the evolution of central banking practices in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Switzerland from the 1970s through the subprime mortgage crisis and the global pandemic. Focusing on the concrete practices of monetary policymakers, Wansleben usefully explores the relationship between the development of novel techniques of monetary policy implementation and the financialization of the economy, with the paradox that the central bank appears more powerful, but exercises this power in a system that is ever more prone to crisis. While agreeing with the broad strokes of Wansleben’s analysis, I raise questions about the nature of the ‘infrastructural power’ exercised by the state through financial markets, suggesting that the growing salience of the central bank in the policymaking apparatus should not be conflated with its independent influence over the direction of economic policy.