Financial Crises and Regulation: A Heterodox Approach

The bank failures of the early 2020s challenged the view that the financial reforms implemented after the 2007-2009 financial crisis had strengthened the robustness of the financial system. Despite the commonly held belief that measures such as the Basel Framework and Dodd Frank Act had provided the financial sector with an effective shield against disruption, this book argues that the failure of these reforms to prevent further financial crises was not inevitable.The book contextualizes the long history of financial instability, elucidating the features of capitalism’s current phase that make it so prone to financial crises, and highlighting other periods (notably the post-war period) characterized by remarkable stability.The book draws on post-Keynesian analyses of the evolution of capitalism and the endogenous instability of capitalist economies - by Minsky in particular - and incorporates insights from French regulatory theory.From this perspective, financial crises are not the res