Market societies use narratives to justify the social technology of money. As debates continue around money, debt, and the state, it is worthwhile to review three parables of money—credit money, commodity money and chartalism.

Under the banner of monopsony, economists in recent years have built an impressive catalog of empirical work that offers a more plausible baseline model for labor markets. While monopsony has a long history, new research uses big data to measure it at a national scale.

Calls for unions and activists to transform Wall Street from the inside have proliferated since 2008. But when progressives organize as shareholders—the financialization of protest—good intentions inevitably run up against a fundamental obstacle: the bottom line.