What Happened to the Bondholding Class? Public Debt, Power and the Top One Per Cent (Preprint)

In 1887 Henry Carter Adams produced a study demonstrating that the ownership of government bonds was heavily concentrated in the hands of a 'bondholding class' that lent to and, in Adams's view, controlled the government like dominant shareholders control a corporation. The interests of this bondholding class clashed with the interests of the masses, whose burdensome taxes financed the interest payments on government bonds. Since the late nineteenth century there has been plenty of debate about the ownership of the public debt. But the empirical evidence offered to support the various arguments has been scant. As a result, political economists have few answers to questions first raised by Adams over a century ago: how has the pattern of public debt ownership changed? Can we still speak of a powerful 'bondholding class'? Does public debt redistribute income from taxpayers to public creditors? This article develops a new framework to address these questions. Anchored within a 'capital as power' approach, the research indicates a staggering pattern of concentration in the ownership of US public debt in the hands of the top one per cent of US households over the past three decades. Accordingly, the bondholding class is still alive and well in contemporary US capitalism

Investment Bank Power and Neoliberal Regulation: From the Volcker Shock to the Volcker Rule (Preprint)

investment banking monopoly capital powerThe power of investment banks has played a pivotal role in the monopoly capital school’s analyses of US capitalist development. However this paper suggests that monopoly capital’s explanation of the changing nature of this power is severely limited. These limitations can be traced to the school’s logically circular and empirically inoperable theory of capital accumulation. The paper goes on to offer an alternative theoretical-empirical account of the power of investment banks since the early 1980s. Based on the notion of capital as power, the research suggests, contrary to the monopoly capital account, that investment banks have experienced a rapid resurgence in their power over this period. This resurgence must be understood with reference to the unique ways that investment banks have maneuvered within neoliberal regulation

Trump and the Bond Market: Why a Flight From U.S. Treasuries Is Unlikely

bond market distribution Donald TrumpFROM THE ARTICLE: Trump’s election made investors justifiably nervous. But a mass exodus from the U.S. Treasuries market is unlikely, both because the United States remains the most relatively safe investment option in a perilous world and because Trump’s policies will entrench the power of the superrich owners of Treasuries. The existence of an influential bloc of domestic owners should offer some solace to foreign investors rattled by the new administration’s nationalist rhetoric. But perhaps the main lesson for the holders of U.S. Treasuries is that the inertia in the global financial system is strong -- even in the face of a change like Trump

Public Debt, Inequality and Power. The Making of a Modern Debt State

capital distribution economic policy interest ownership power public debt spending state subsidies tax United States[This book is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution + Noncommercial + NoDerivatives 3.0 license. Copyright is retained by the author(s)] FROM THE BACK COVER: Who are the dominant owners of US public debt? Is it widely held, or concentrated in the hands of a few? Does ownership of public debt give these bondholders power over our government? What do we make of the fact that foreign-owned debt has ballooned to nearly 50 percent today? Until now, we have not had any satisfactory answers to these questions. Public Debt, Inequality, and Power is the first comprehensive historical analysis of public debt ownership in the United States. It reveals that ownership of federal bonds has been increasingly concentrated in the hands of the 1 percent over the past three decades. Based on extensive and original research, Public Debt, Inequality, and Power will shock and enlighten. “These days, the topic of America’s debt stirs heated political debate. But one of the most important facts in this discussion has hitherto been obscured: who actually owns that debt inside America? Hager has done some fascinating and pathbreaking research to answer that question and concluded that the ownership pattern is surprisingly concentrated—and unequal—and that this may have implications for how the entire debt debate develops in the coming years. This is an illuminating work that deserves wide attention.” (GILLIAN TETT, Financial Times) “The relationship between the ownership structure of government debt and economic inequality—between public finance and the class structure of modern capitalism—is one of several central concerns of political economy that has been almost completely neglected in recent decades. Sandy Brian Hager’s book returns to the subject with theoretical and empirical bravado.” (WOLFGANG STREECK, Director Emeritus, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies) “Money is power, and US Treasury debt is the world’s single largest financial instrument. Hager’s insightful book fills an enormous hole in our knowledge of who owns this debt and how the power flowing from that increasingly concentrated ownership affects US and global politics.” (HERMAN M. SCHWARTZ, author of Subprime Nation: American Power, Global Capital, and the Housing Bubble) *** SANDY BRIAN HAGER is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. He has published in various journals, including New Political Economy and Socio-Economic Review

Public Debt, Inequality, and Power: The Making of a Modern Debt State

Who are the dominant owners of US public debt? Is it widely held, or concentrated in the hands of a few? Does ownership of public debt give these bondholders power over our government? What do we make of the fact that foreign-owned debt has ballooned to nearly 50 percent today? Until now, we have not had any satisfactory answers to these questions. Public Debt, Inequality, and Power is the first comprehensive historical analysis of public debt ownership in the United States. It reveals that ownership of federal bonds has been increasingly concentrated in the hands of the 1 percent over the past three decades. Based on extensive and original research, Public Debt, Inequality, and Power will shock and enlighten

A Requiem for Carbon Capitalism?

capitalization energy fossil fuel net profit oil companiesThe fossil fuels business has fallen on hard times. For years the sector has been mired in a slump due to stubbornly low oil and gas prices, concerns over climate change, as well as technological breakthroughs in renewable energy technologies. With the Covid-19 pandemic dealing a further blow to their fortunes, some media pundits claim that fossil fuels companies are entering a phase of terminal decline. News of the immanent demise of companies responsible for a significant portion of global greenhouse gas emissions might sound like a boon for efforts to avert climate breakdown. But just how bad is the outlook for fossil fuels? In this research note, I offer a preview of findings from a new research project on the financial performance of the fossil fuels sector on a global scale. My research shows that the share of oil, gas and coal companies in global profit and capitalization has steadily decreased over the past half century, while that of alternative energy companies has jumped since 2018. But despite falling distributive shares, what we also find is that the overall magnitude of oil, gas and coal profit and capitalization currently dwarfs that of the alternative energy companies. All signs indicate that capitalists are still, as Tim Di Muzio observed a decade ago, capitalizing a future unsustainable

America's Real 'Debt Dilemma'

public debt power distribution redistribution bondholding class inequality top one per cent United StatesIn the wake of the current crisis there has been an explosive rise in the level of the US public debt. These massive levels of public indebtedness are expected to keep growing unless there are drastic changes to existing budgetary policies. According to a recent series in the Financial Times, the US now faces a ‘debt dilemma’ over whether the country should bring its fiscal house in order through tax hikes on the rich or cuts to entitlement programs. This apparent dilemma has sparked a debate over which groups should bear the burden of debt repayment and fiscal adjustment. However, one crucial question remains unasked: whose powerful interests are served by the public debt? Mapping the share of federal bonds holdings of and interest to the top 1%, my research uncovers a staggering trend towards concentration over the past three decades and shows that federal income taxes and transfer payments have done little to offset this regressive distribution. Increases to the public debt without progressive redistributive policies are likely to aggravate an already explosive situation characterized by inequality, while decreases to the privately held portion of the public debt are likely to encounter resistance from the top 1%. This is America’s real debt dilemma

Public Debt as Corporate Power: Mapping the New Aristocracy of Finance

aristocracy of finance corporate power public debt United StatesIn various writings Karl Marx made references to an ‘aristocracy of finance’ in Western Europe and the United States that dominated ownership of the public debt. Drawing on original research, this paper offers the first comprehensive analysis of the pattern of public debt ownership within the US corporate sector. The research shows that over the past three decades, and especially in the context of the current crisis, a new ‘aristocracy of finance’ has emerged, as corporate holdings of the public debt have become rapidly concentrated in favor of large corporations classified within Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE). Drawing on Wolfgang Streeck’s concept of the ‘debt state’, the paper goes on to demonstrate how concentration in ownership of the public debt reinforces patterns of social inequality and proceeds in tandem with a shift in government policy, one that prioritizes the interests of government bondholders over the general citizenry

Varieties of Top Incomes

income distributionFocusing on the advanced political economies, this article critically reviews the recent scholarship on the evolution of top incomes over the past few decades. The existing literature shows that the determination of top incomes is complex, multifaceted and bound up with factors associated with both politics and economics. Technological change and globalization are vital sources of change in contemporary capitalism, but the continued diversity in top income shares across the advanced capitalist world suggests that these forces alone cannot account for the empirical patterns. Instead, there is compelling evidence that power and politics, including government policy, trade union and left party strength, institutions and financialization, all play a pivotal role in regulating distributive outcomes. It is argued that future research will require a plurality of methodological approaches in order to clarify the complex causal process that drives top-end income concentration