Hybrid event.
To enter the virtual seminar room, please use the following login credentials:
Zoom URL: https://uni-frankfurt.zoom.us/j/61259669683?pwd=NGcrV1B5clo1WDAxcVJBd0NxQjlZZz09
Meeting ID: 612 5966 9683
Password: 847238
Abstract (excerpt from the introduction):
During a 1912 presidential campaign speech, Woodrow Wilson commented on one of the most divisive subjects in American society: the debate that surrounds capital and equality. According to then-Governor Wilson, “The great monopoly in this country is the monopoly of big credits. So long as that exists, our old variety and freedom and individual energy of development are out of question.” The same speech described financiers, as the commandants of capital, as inherently disposed to “chill and check and destroy genuine economic freedom.”
The notion that capitalist institutions--and financial markets and financiers in particular--entrench wealth inequality through their grasp on capital has endured in American political rhetoric and popular imagination. The Article posits that this oft-repeated narrative--that the capitalists are causing inequality--unhelpfully conceals the State’s own role in “chilling and checking” economic freedom, contributing to wealth disparity in the process. In today’s macro-financial environment, the constraints imposed on private equity investment provide an ideal case study to illustrate this problem.