Tuesday , May 6 2025
Home / Mike Norman Economics / Kathleen Pistor: The Code of Capital — John Emerson

Kathleen Pistor: The Code of Capital — John Emerson

Summary:
In the aftermath of the 2007 crash Katharina Pistor“sought to discover what lay behind finance’s stupendous expansion in recent decades, and what accounted for its steep fall”. Her specialty is law, and her book is first of all about how “law has been put at the service of capital”, especially during the last two centuries (and above all in recent decades). Beyond that, she argues that capital is the product of law: “Most observers treat law as a sideshow, when it is the very cloth from which capital is cut.” (Some things in this book remind me of points made in Walter Karp’s 1993 Indispensable Enemies about the role of government in capital creation).Pistor’s book is pretty demanding, but it was written for a non-specialist public and is one of the best works of

Topics:
Mike Norman considers the following as important:

This could be interesting, too:

Robert Vienneau writes Austrian Capital Theory And Triple-Switching In The Corn-Tractor Model

Mike Norman writes The Accursed Tariffs — NeilW

Mike Norman writes IRS has agreed to share migrants’ tax information with ICE

Mike Norman writes Trump’s “Liberation Day”: Another PR Gag, or Global Reorientation Turning Point? — Simplicius

In the aftermath of the 2007 crash Katharina Pistor“sought to discover what lay behind finance’s stupendous expansion in recent decades, and what accounted for its steep fall”. Her specialty is law, and her book is first of all about how “law has been put at the service of capital”, especially during the last two centuries (and above all in recent decades). Beyond that, she argues that capital is the product of law: “Most observers treat law as a sideshow, when it is the very cloth from which capital is cut.” (Some things in this book remind me of points made in Walter Karp’s 1993 Indispensable Enemies about the role of government in capital creation).

Pistor’s book is pretty demanding, but it was written for a non-specialist public and is one of the best works of “popularization” that I have ever read. It’s well-organized and well-written enough that rather than reviewing it, I just cite key passages in hopes that people will want to read the whole thing....

This type of analysis emphasizes the institutional basis of economics and finance and casts shade on the assumption of naturalism that underlies conventional economic assumptions and its approach to model-building. MMT is grounded in institutional economics and like other heterodox schools it rejects the naturalistic assumption in economics for an historical approach.

Epigrues
Kathleen Pistor: The Code of Capital
John Emerson

Mike Norman
Mike Norman is an economist and veteran trader whose career has spanned over 30 years on Wall Street. He is a former member and trader on the CME, NYMEX, COMEX and NYFE and he managed money for one of the largest hedge funds and ran a prop trading desk for Credit Suisse.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *