Historians often portray the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) as a conservative force in debates over free enterprise, battles against unions and government regulation, and the rise of capitalism in the United States. In The Industrialists: How the National Association of Manufacturers Shaped American Capitalism (Princeton UP, 2020), Jennifer Delton (Professor of History at Skidmore College) provides a comprehensive and nuanced political history. Delton focuses on the conservative policy goals of the organization but also its surprisingly progressive tactics and internal conflicts such as welcoming women and workers with disabilities, supporting the UN, embracing aspects of cosmopolitanism, and supporting the ERA, Civil Rights Act, and aspects of affirmative action. Delton deftly identifies the wider economic, ideological, and institutional concerns that drove NAM actors. As the book interrogates how the National Association of Manufacturing did – and did not – work, NAM emerges as a capitalist modernizer. She examines 125 years of massive change in American economic policy with the NAM at its center in order to interrogate manufacturing’s role in the development of capitalism at home and abroad – with implications for how we understand neoliberalism – especially liberal internationalist tendencies. Delton argues that liberal internationalism (associated often with Woodrow Wilson) can be seen as a crucial step toward the international institutions favored by post World War II European neoliberals.The book is divided into three parts. Part one traces the ascent and reorganization of industrial manufacturing from the 1890s to 1940. Part two highlights manufacturing’s dominance in US society and the world (1941-1980) as the US lowered tariffs and pursued free trade. The share of GDP peaked in 1953 when manufacturing represented 25.8% of domestic production. Part three treats the decline in manufacturing (beginning in 1960) and emphasizes deindustrialization, globalization, and the disintegration of the large multidivisional corporations in the 1990s.The book investigates how the globalizing impulse of neoliberalism played out historically in 20th century US politics – more specifically, how liberal internationalist ideas that were promoted by Democrats and antithetical to traditional political conservativism came to be espoused by the Republican party. Delton writes that “this is especially relevant now, as the current head of the Republican party [President Donald Trump, Republican] seems to be undoing the work of neoliberalism and liberal internationalists alike.” NAM’s history helps explain the bipartisan support for economic internationalism, freer trade, and what would later be called neoliberalism, even before the Cold War and Reagan, and even as voters (and Congress) remain extremely divided about these issues. The story of the NAM is full of contradictions, but The Industrialists deftly tracks them all, contextualizing the impacts on the national and global economy.In the podcast, Dr. Delton describes how the NAM archive was shaped by professional staff members – particularly one woman – whose views departed from NAM leaders. The referenced article, “Who Tells Your Story: Contested History at the NAM” is here.Benjamin Warren assisted with this podcast.Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013) and, most recently, “Retreat from the Rule of Law: Locke and the Perils of Stand Your Ground” in the Journal of Politics (July 2020). Email her comments at sliebell@sju.edu or tweet to @SusanLiebell. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

JC de Swaan does not shy from a challenge. In his new book, Seeking Virtue in Finance: Contributing to Society in a Conflicted Industry (Cambridge University Press, 2020), de Swaan, argues that it is possible to work in finance and not fall prey to the worst ethical ills of a profit maximizing industry. A lecturer at Princeton and partner in at Wall Street hedge fund, de Swaan spent years chronicling examples of virtuous behavior in finance. He distills his research into four "pillars" of ethical behavior for financial professionals. They include 1. Customers first, 2. Social wealth creation 3. Humanistic leadership and 4. Engaged citizenship. Those are easy to say, but hard to do in an industry not known for those attributes. Seeking Virtue in Finance should be required reading for every associate class on Wall Street, as well as their managers.Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. Trained as a historian of modern Russia, he is the author most recently of Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors. You can follow him on Twitter @HistoryInvestor or at http://www.strategicdividendinvestor.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Today I spoke with Dr Margaret Heffernan about her latest book, Uncharted: How to Map and Navigate the Future Together (Simon and Schuster, 2020). Margaret produced programmes for the BBC for 13 years. She then moved to the US where she became a businesswomen. She is the author of six books and a successful TED Talk speaker. She is also a Professor of Practice at the University of Bath.In her 2012 TED Talk, ‘Dare to disagree’, she told the story Alice Stewart. This is the story of how clear, certain medical data, are not always enough to change rapidly our professional rules and personal habits.In her 2019 TED Talk she argued that the more we rely on technology to make us efficient, the fewer skills we have to confront the unexpected. That’s why we need less technology and ‘more messy human skills - imagination, humility, bravery - to solve problems in business, government and life in an unpredictable age’.In her new book, she explores the people and organizations who aren’t daunted by uncertainty: ‘We are addicted to prediction, desperate for certainty about the future. But the complexity of modern life won’t allow that; experts in forecasting are reluctant to look more than 400 days out’.Uncertainty is clearly an important construct in both macroeconomics and behavioural economics. This book starts with an anecdote on the early life of a great American economist, Irving Fisher. His swimming accident and the discovery of his tuberculosis contributed to the development his research interest in stability and monetary economics.Ranging freely through history and from business to science, government to friendships, this refreshing book challenges us to resist the false promises of technology and efficiency and instead to mine our own creativity and humanity for the capacity to create the futures we want and can believe in.Andrea Bernardi is Senior Lecturer in Employment and Organization Studies at Oxford Brookes University in the UK. He holds a doctorate in Organization Theory from the University of Milano-Bicocca. He has held teaching and research positions in Italy, China and the UK. Among his research interests are the use of history in management studies, the co-operative sector, and Chinese co-operatives. He is the co-convener of the EAEPE’s permanent track on Co-operative economy and collective ownership. Currently he is associate editor of The Review of Evolutionary Political Economy (REPE) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

For readers – including non-economists – who want to get to grips with the nature and scale of the last financial crisis, how it was managed and mismanaged, and its particular impact on a small, open economy, Patrick Honohan's book Currency, Credit and Crisis: Central Banking in Ireland and Europe (Cambridge UP, 2020)This is, in part, because it covers complex issues yet is written for a non-specialist audience. But mostly it’s because, as Olivier Blanchard says, this is “financial crisis, seen from the driver’s seat". Honohan is not just an accomplished monetary economist with a lot to say but he was also, from 2009 to 2015, the governor of the Central Bank of Ireland and a member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank.His book combines a monetary and financial history of Ireland since independence, theory and history around the formation of the Euro Area, an assessment of lessons learned from the crisis, and a behind-the-scenes memoir of how the crisis was fought.Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Global Advisors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Modern finance isn't really all that modern. Three centuries ago, Great Britain's need for money to fight its wars, the appearance of joint stock companies, and the emerging quantification of all aspects of life converged to create new notions and forms of money and investments. And then there was a spectacular bubble in 1720. The South Sea stock rose and fell quickly, but the financing structures remained and last to this day in evolved form. In his new book Money for Nothing: The Scientists, Fraudsters, and Corrupt Politicians Who Reinvented Money, Panicked a Nation, and Made the World Rich (Random House, 2020), MIT Professor Thomas Levenson tells the rip-roading tale.Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. Trained as a historian of modern Russia, he is the author most recently of Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors. You can follow him on Twitter @HistoryInvestor or at http://www.strategicdividendinvestor.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

The work of Alfred Charles Pigou may not be as well known to people today as that of his contemporary John Maynard Keynes, but as Ian Kumekawa details in his book The First Serious Optimist: A. C. Pigou and the Birth of Welfare Economics (Princeton University Press, 2017), over the course of his long career Pigou advanced ideas that remain very relevant today. As Kumekawa describes, Pigou entered the field of economics at an important point in its evolution. As a student of Alfred Marshall, Pigou embraced his mentor’s more analytical approach to the subject, though without the same determination to separate it from political theory. This placed Pigou at the center of many of the issues of economics that the public faced in the early 20th century, to which Pigou contributed widely, particularly in the area of welfare economics. Pigou’s own ideas on these subjects evolved in response to his experiences with events, as he shifted from his early reform-minded liberalism to skepticism about the motivations of political leaders before he embraced once more the possibility of meaningful political change in the aftermath of the Second World War. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Gene Ludwig cares. The former banker, government regulator, and serial entrepreneur cares deeply about the hollowing out of the American middle class over the past several decades, not least of all in his hometown of York, PA. So he gathered the country's best and brightest in 2019 for a conference at Yale Law School to come up with specific policy proposals that can reverse that process.The details of what has happened make for difficult but necessary reading. In The Vanishing American Dream: A Frank Look at the Economic Realities Facing Middle- and Lower-Income Americans (Disruption Books) the policy proposals to rebuild the middle class are divided into those at the federal level, and those at the local level.Many readers will find the former typical and expected, but the latter constitute the most engaging part of the book. Both sorts of policies will be hard to implement given the country's current state of division, but Ludwig does not back down from the challenge.Gene Ludwig is the founder of the Promontory family of companies and Canapi LLC, the largest financial technology venture fund in the United States. He is the CEO of Promontory Financial Group, an IBM company, and chairman of Promontory MortgagePath, a technology-based, mortgage fulfillment and solutions company.Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. Trained as a historian of modern Russia, he is the author most recently of Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors. You can follow him on Twitter @HistoryInvestor or at http://www.strategicdividendinvestor.com  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

I spoke with Prof. Christopher Marquis, Samuel C. Johnson Professor in Global Sustainable Enterprise and Professor of Management at Cornell University. His latest research book tells the story of an ambitious certification programme that aims to signal to customers and shareholders those small and large corporations that are responsible and caring with their workers, customers, with the planet and the local communities where they operate.Businesses have a big role to play in a capitalist society. They can tip the scales toward the benefit of the few, with toxic side effects for all, or they can guide us toward better, more equitable long-term solutions.In Better Business: How the B Corp Movement Is Remaking Capitalism (Yale UP, 2020), Marquis tells the story of the rise of a new corporate form—the B Corporation. Founded by a group of friends who met at Stanford, these companies undergo a rigorous certification process, overseen by the B Lab, and commit to putting social benefits, the rights of workers, community impact, and environmental stewardship on equal footing with financial shareholders.In our conversation Christopher mentioned the origin of the book and why he believes in the work done by B Lab. The book is divided into 11 chapter and is full of interesting practical examples. In the talk we also mentioned the notion of ‘benefit corporation’, in the US and elsewhere.I have asked the author why we should trust the founders of the B Movement and their certification programme. He answered with some examples and convincing arguments. We then focused on chapter 1, ‘Interdependencies not Externalities’, chapter 6, ‘Employees as the Heart of the Company’, chapter 10, ‘Big Isn’t Always Bad’, and eventually chapter 11, ‘Convincing Consumers to Care’. We concluded with his plans for the next book.Informed by over a decade of research and animated by interviews with the movement’s founders and leading figures, Marquis’s book explores the rapid growth of companies choosing to certify as B Corps, both in the United States and internationally, and explains why the future of B Corporations is vital for us all.Andrea Bernardi is Senior Lecturer in Employment and Organization Studies at Oxford Brookes University in the UK. He holds a doctorate in Organization Theory from the University of Milan, Bicocca. He has held teaching and research positions in Italy, China and the UK. Among his research interests are the use of history in management studies, the co-operative sector, and Chinese co-operatives. His latest project is looking at health care in China. He is the co-convener of the EAEPE’s permanent track on Co-operative economy and collective ownership. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Is there a consensus on the best response to global warming? Not even close. Left and right both bring their own tools, math, and, most notably, agendas--climate related and non-climate related--to their policy prescriptions.Economist Robert Pollin has teamed up with Noam Chomsky to produce a manifesto for the New Green Deal in Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet (Verso). Their plan attempts to keep the planet from heating up too much while simultaneously redressing the economic wrongs that they blame substantially on unfettered capitalism.Not everyone will agree that eco-socialism is the answer to global warming, but all participants in the debate will want to understand the wide range of policy proposals that are being brought to the table.Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Laureate Professor at the University of Arizona.Robert Pollin is Professor of Economics and founding Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. Trained as a historian of modern Russia, he is the author most recently of Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors. You can follow him on Twitter @HistoryInvestor or at http://www.strategicdividendinvestor.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

What is money? No, really, what is money? It turns out the answer is not so simple.During the course of the 20th century, most of us have gotten used to the notion of a single medium of exchange based on Federal Reserve notes which we call dollars. They look the same, feel the same, and have the same use everywhere in the country. We are so comfortable with that medium of exchange that we are now increasingly doing away with the paper and accepting a digital version of said money. The convenience of having a single and stable currency as a medium of exchange did no exist in the early republic.Joshua Greenberg's Bank Notes and Shinplasters: The Rage for Paper Money in the Early Republic (University of Pennsylvania Press) describes the many types of money in circulation at the time and how all participants in the economic system had to master the discounting of paper money from one institution to another, from one town to another, from one transaction to another. It constituted an entire sub-culture, and an excellent lens to view the economic history of the pre-Civil War period.Joshua R. Greenberg is the editor of Commonplace: the journal of early American life.Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. Trained as a historian of modern Russia, he is the author most recently of Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors. You can follow him on Twitter @Back2BizBook or at http://www.strategicdividendinvestor.com   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance