Making Money:The Philosophy of Crisis Capitalism

“Explosive … an absolutely indispensable guide through the labyrinth of economics.” —Slavoj Žižek

What is money? Where does it come from? Who makes it? And how can we understand the current state of our economy as a crisis of money itself?

In Making Money, Ole Bjerg turns these questions into a matter of philosophical rather than economic analysis. Applying the thinking of Slavoj Žižek and other scholars to mainstream economic literature, Bjerg provides a radical new way of looking at the mysterious stuff we use to buy things. It is a theory unfolded in reflections on the nature of monetary phenomena such as financial markets, banks, debt, credit, derivatives, gold, risk, value, price, interests, and arbitrage. The analysis of money is put into an historical context, suggesting that the current financial turbulence and debt crisis are evidence that we live in the age of post-credit capitalism. By bridging the fields of economics and contemporary philosophy, Bjerg's work engages in a compelling form of intellectual arbitrage.