Gerald Epstein
Co-Director, PERI; Professor of Economics
Gerald Epstein received his Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University, and is Professor of Economics and a founding Co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI). He has published widely on a variety of progressive economic policy issues, especially in the areas of central banking and international finance. His most recent book is Busting the Bankers’ Club: Finance for the Rest of Us, published in January 2024 from the University of California Press. He is also the author of The Political Economy of Central Banking: Contested Control and the Power of Finance (Edward Elgar Press, 2019), and What’s Wrong with Modern Money Theory? A Policy Critique (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Epstein is also the editor or co-editor of many books, including The Political Economy of International Finance in an Age of Inequality: Soft Currencies, Hard Landings (Edward Elgar Press, 2018), The Handbook of the Political Economy of Financial Crises (with Martin H. Wolfson, Oxford University Press, 2013), and Financialization and the World Economy (Edward Elgar Press, 2004).
Busting the Bankers’ Club: Finance for the Rest of Us
Bankers brought the global economic system to its knees in 2007 and nearly did the same in 2020. Both times, the US government bailed out the banks and left them in control. Gerald Epstein’s book, Busting the Bankers’ Club confronts the powerful people and institutions that benefit from our broken financial system—and the struggle to create an alternative.