Fragile by design: The Political Origins of Banking Crises and Scarce Credit

Abstract

Preface ix SECTION ONE No Banks without States, and No States without Banks 1 If Stable and Effi cient Banks Are Such a Good Idea, Why Are They So Rare? 3 2 The Game of Bank Bargains 27 3 Tools of Conquest and Survival: Why States Need Banks 60 4 Privileges with Burdens: War, Empire, and the Monopoly Structure of English Banking 84 5 Banks and Democracy: Britain in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 105 SECTION TWO The Cost of Banker-Populist Alliances: The United States versus Canada 6 Crippled by Populism: U.S. Banking from Colonial Times to 1990 153 7 The New U.S. Bank Bargain: Megabanks, Urban Activists, and the Erosion of Mortgage Standards 203 8 Leverage, Regulatory Failure, and the Subprime Crisis 256 9 Durable Partners: Politics and Banking in Canada 283 SECTION THREE Authoritarianism, Democratic Transitions, and the Game of Bank Bargains 10 Mexico: Chaos Makes Cronyism Look Good 331 11 When Autocracy Fails: Banking and Politics in Mexico since 1982 366 12 Infl ation Machines: Banking and State Finance in Imperial Brazil 390 13 The Democratic Consequences of Infl ation-Tax Banking in Brazil 415 SECTION FOUR Going beyond Structural Narratives 14 Traveling to Other Places: Is Our Sample Representative? 451 15 Reality Is a Plague on Many Houses 479 References 507 Index 549

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