Fiat Money and Banking: A Blueprint for Reform

The Global Financial Crisis broke the monetary system. Here’s how to fix it.

In Making Money Work: How to Rewrite the Rules of Our Financial System, Matt Sekerke and Steve H. Hanke deliver a rigorous and fascinating exploration of the monetary economy. You’ll find a detailed and clear roadmap of how and why fiat money is created and destroyed, its connections to the broader economy, and the objective mechanisms that underwrite and maintain its value.

In their exploration, Sekerke and Hanke solve many problems and puzzles and shed light on several important questions:

• Why economists misunderstand the structure and function of the monetary system
• The central role of the commercial banking system in fiat money regimes, and why commercial banks are not like other financial intermediaries
• The economic and regulatory constraints on bank money creation
• The interplay between banking and capital markets in funding investment projects
• How the ＂banks＂ that dominate the international financial landscape distort the lines between banking and capital markets business
• Why banking regulation and fiscal policy determine and constrain monetary policy to an equal or greater extent than central bank actions

Sekerke and Hanke trace important post-crisis policy developments and sketch the broad strokes of a new operating model that would restore the performance of the monetary system and make better use of aggregate savings:

• Making neutrality the explicit goal of monetary policy, properly understood
• Increasing the supply of bankable projects and keeping them on bank balance sheets
• Breaking the financial system’s fatal attraction to land and real estate
• Reducing regulatory distortions in lending markets
• Reforming universal banking institutions and stimulating competition
• Transitioning to a quantity-based monetary policy framework

An engaging and incisive guide to the global systems of money and banking, Making Money Work is destined to become a sought-after classic for bankers, finance professionals, policymakers, regulators, academics, and laypeople with an interest in money and banking.

MATT SEKERKE is a Managing Director at SEDA Experts, Senior Macro Advisor at Hiddenite Capital Partners, a Fellow at the Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise at the Johns Hopkins University, and a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Finance at Durham University Business School. He is the author of Bayesian Risk Management (Wiley Finance, 2015).

STEVE H. HANKE is a Professor of Applied Economics and Founder and Co-Director of the Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise at the Johns Hopkins University. Hanke has served as an advisor to governments and heads of state in Europe, South America, and Asia. Currently, he serves as Chairman of the Supervisory Board of AMG Critical Materials in Amsterdam. He is the co-author of Capital, Interest, and Waiting (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) with Leland B. Yeager.