The Rise of the Rich? - Leon Wansleben, The Rise of Central Banks: State Power in Financial Capitalism (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2023, 353 p.)

In his recent book The Rise of Central Banks: State Power in Financial Capitalism, Leon Wansleben details "how central banks have redrawn their connections with financial sectors for the purposes of policymaking" [xii].Existing scholarship on central banks has long recognized the importance of their relationship to the private financial industry.There is the well-known revolving-door argument-suggesting that private financial agents and the central bankers who regulate them are one and the same. 1 There is the historical observation that central banks in most countries began as private enterprises, or at least as private-public partnerships in which private banks pooled their resources to make banking safer by preventing runs, and more profitable by mobilizing more resources. 2Then there is the view that monetary policy bolsters inequality by disproportionately benefiting asset holders who are disproportionately rich. 3 In almost every way, central banks are intertwined with the private financial industry, which, in one sense, isn't that surprising.Central banks are meant to regulate the creation of money in society.Private financial agents create money, much more than the state does.So, their tight relationship is natural (even constructed 4 ).Nevertheless, critics suggest that the relationship between central bankers and private finance is a problem, like the fox guarding the henhouse.Wansleben's book gives precision to that intuition.Relying heavily on Michael Mann's concept of infrastructural power, Wansleben shows that central banks must conduct monetary policy through the existing private financial system.Since the 1970s, economies have become increasing financialized, and finance increasingly global.The consequence, according to Wansleben, is The Rise of Central Banks.