The Money Problem ─ Rethinking Financial Regulation

Years have passed since the world experienced one of the worst financial crises in history, and while countless experts have analyzed it, many central questions remain unanswered. Should money creation be considered a ‘public’ or ‘private’ activity—or both? What do we mean by, and want from, financial stability? What role should regulation play? How would we design our monetary institutions if we could start from scratch?

In The Money Problem, Morgan Ricks addresses all of these questions and more, offering a practical yet elegant blueprint for a modernized system of money and banking—one that, crucially, can be accomplished through incremental changes to the United States’ current system. He brings a critical, missing dimension to the ongoing debates over financial stability policy, arguing that the issue is primarily one of monetary system design. The Money Problem offers a way to mitigate the risk of catastrophic panic in the future, and it will expand the financial reform conversation in the United States and abroad.

Morgan Ricks is associate professor at Vanderbilt Law School. Previously, he was a senior policy advisor and financial restructuring expert at the US Treasury Department, a risk-arbitrage trader at Citadel Investment Group, a vice president in the investment banking division of Merrill Lynch & Co, and a corporate takeover lawyer at Wachtell Lipton.