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.

Thank you! It’s still in progress!

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

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!

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

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.