Another way to think about it is the evolution of asset classes and derivatives to be ever more remote from real investment. CDOs and interest rate swaps have underlying bets that affect home prices and government borrowing, but sports betting just amplifies domestic violence.

What's happening in sports betting now is an even stupider version of what happened in banking and investing in the 80s/90s: regulatory arbitrage that in theory offers better consumer prices and choices but ultimately fuels social and economic instability. www.wsj.com/finance/kals...

Harry Braverman really did anticipate the dynamics that drive AI, the separation between conception and execution becoming so complete that no human is needed for the latter

New #awarded #research in #bizhis

Take a look at 🧵

@hagleycenter.bsky.social @gnvbusinesshistory.bsky.social @repec-nep-his.bsky.social @businesshistory.bsky.social @womenknowhistory.bsky.social @historians.org @financialtimes.com @financewatch.bsky.social

Thank you! It’s still in progress!

An example of what's missing in our accounts of financialization and deregulation: an explanation of why Wall Street's #1 political priority in the 1980s is _defending_ Glass-Steagall.

But another, led by Reagan Treasury Secretary Don Regan, celebrated the utopian possibilities that the “securities state” promised: a line of credit to every consumer, capital for every business, and no need to worry about steering the economy away from inflation or deflation again—the market would

But this process wasn’t the inevitable result of deregulation or technological change, but was contested by policymakers. One group, led by Paul Volcker, worried about how the breakdown of the institutional structure of economic security could destabilize American capitalism and society

Using new and neglected archives of financiers, banks, trade associations, and policymakers, I show how Wall Street expanded through and then took over the midcentury economic security state of regulated banks, thrifts, and pension funds

My dissertation project, “The Securities State: Washington, Wall Street and the Financialization of America, 1979-1992” asks how and why Wall Street become the central force in intermediating credit, savings, investment, and liquidity throughout the entire US economy

Thrilled to announce that I've been awarded the 2025 John E. Rovensky Fellowship in US Business and Economic History from the University of Illinois Foundation and @businesshistoryc.bsky.social!

This is insulting, he should settle for nothing less than Ambassador to Turkey

If you're interested in a preview of my dissertation project: "Wall Street’s role isn’t just about markets...It’s about legitimacy, about how the government tries to deliver economic security without doing it directly.” global.columbia.edu/news/how-wal...

J Levy's "Accounting for Profits" is really brilliant but a big blind spot is it doesn't talk at all about cash flow. A cash-flow focused accounting history of the 20th c US would center Penn Central as much as GM!

TIL the turn to cash flow vs profits in accounting and finance really began after the collapse of Penn Central

The better version of "wax on, wax off" is shifting US higher ed to an Oxford tutorial model that emphasizes 1-1 or very small group oral discussion. But at scale that would require many more instructors, and realistically that's not happening any time soon.

I don't love this framing but I think it succinctly captures what we in the humanities are out here doing: teaching skills that at best are used for individual human flourishing and civilizational advancement, and at worst for training the next generation of managers

I think my teaching in the age of AI position is basically "wax on, wax off": forcing students to arbitrarily work without AI (ie blue books) forces them to learn valuable, lifelong skills (ie critical reasoning) that they would/could not otherwise. It's about karate, not waxing.

But that perception of safety in “realness” is exactly why the 2008 crash was so significant—the assets that no one wanted to buy were the very ones believed to be safest. The false security of the real was the problem, rather than a contemporary tulip mania.

It’s very illuminating that the 2008 financial crisis was driven by the collapse in asset-backed securities, the most “safe” and “real” financial assets, backed by actual cash flows (ie mortgage payments) and even physical assets (homes). The opposite of crypto, or ‘00 dot-com 1/

Anyone interested in joining a roundtable on new directions in the history of US economic thought at the S-USIH conference in Detroit this November? Feel free to share with anyone interested, email [email protected]

Trump and Musk are unfortunately operating in the Goldilocks zone for right wing politics: cutting the administrative state as much as possible without spooking Wall Street (which depends on predictable expectations) and triggering economic chaos and a mass streets opposition