Author(s): Fred Block (Editor); Robert Hockett (Editor)

Future studies

Wall Street banks, hedge funds, and private equity firms have unprecedented power to shape our economy-and to destroy it. The 2008-10 global meltdown and the 2020 pandemic related financial crisis are just the most recent instances of a system run amok. Could we do better? In Democratizing Finance, sociologist Fred Block and law professor Robert Hockett imagine a world of finance organized to benefit Main Street instead of Wall Street. Block and Hockett boldly insist that the only way to fix finance is to democratize it-to expand working people's access to credit and protect them from predatory borrowing, and to transform finance into a tool to reduce inequalities in income, wealth, and power. Democratizing Finance explores concrete ways to build a new, democratic financial system and includes essays by William H. Simon, David M. Woodruff, Michael A. McCarthy, Sarah Quinn, Mark Igra, Selen Güler, Mary Mellor, and Lenore Palladino that amend, elaborate, and challenge Block and Hockett's vision. Book jacket.