In Episode 171 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Katharina Pistor, a leading scholar of corporate governance, money & finance, property rights, and comparative law & legal institutions. She’s also a prominent commentator on cryptocurrencies, has testified before Congress about them, and has written papers dealing with the issues of digital statehood and monetary sovereignty. Her latest book, “The Code of Capital,” is a tour de force that explains in captivating detail how the law is used to code and construct capital, protecting some assets over others, how this creates wealth for society, and how its use and abuse can make the difference between societal cohesion and political revolution.
In today’s conversation, you will learn how the law—a powerful tool for social ordering and wealth creation—has been put to work in the service of private consolidation and political control. This leads us to focus on three, interrelated topics:
The first deals with the nature of property and how the legal system and its network of lawyers turn assets into capital by encoding them with certain, key attributes. One of these attributes, convertibility, has been notably expanded in its application over the last thirteen years, as central banks have accepted an ever broader basket of assets as collateral and used their balance sheets to monetize not only government debt, but mortgages, corporate bonds, and stock ETFs.
The second deals with a knock-on effect of the first, namely, the astronomical growth in the market value of Bitcoin. In this context, Bitcoin can be seen as an exogenous response to the erosion of trust and credibility in the conduct of monetary policy by central banks and in response to questions about the integrity of public money. But questions remain about whether or not a private form of money like Bitcoin can replace state-issued fiat money or if monetary sovereignty even exists without territorial sovereignty.
The third and final area of discussion looks at how creatures of the legal code, like Facebook, Google, Amazon, and others, are using that same code to not only control markets but effectively break them and transform the economic space into something that more closely resembles a system of bonded labour.
After listening to today’s episode, you should be better able to understand how the world we live in today came to be, how its code has been altered, and why promises of a frictionless, deterministic future are chimeras; they are designed to divest us of not only our power but of the very agency that makes this experiment in democratic self-governance possible in the first place.
You can access the episode overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.
If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed
Write us a review on Apple Podcasts
Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website
Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces
Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod
Follow Demetri at @Kofinas
Episode Recorded on 12/29/2020
Global Macro in an Age of Great Power Conflict | Demetri Kofinas
American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict | Elbridge Colby
What’s Driving the Price of Oil? A Supply-Side Story | Rory Johnston
Turkish-Greek Relations & Battle Over the Eastern Mediterranean | Ryan Gingeras
Rise of Shadow Banking & Risks of a Financial Crisis | Lev Menand
Energy Geopolitics & the Remaking of the Modern World | Helen Thompson
Value Investing & How to Have “Soul in the Game" | Vitaliy Katsenelson
The Power of Crisis & How to Fight a Geopolitical Recession | Ian Bremmer
How to Trade Market Sentiment & Why Inflation Is Coming Down | Jared Dillian
The Path Towards Self-Actualization & How to Overcome Your Fears | Demetri Kofinas
The Revenge of Risk Rates & the Return of Dividend Investing | Daniel Peris
How to Trade the Great Rotation From Big Tech to Commodities | Tony Greer
Revenge of the Dollar & the Meltdown in Global Markets | Brent Johnson
The Collapse of LUNA & UST and the Vulnerability in Crypto | Nathaniel Whittemore
The New Era of Great Power Competition | John Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt
Revenge of the Old Economy & How to Invest in the Commodity Supercycle | Jeff Currie
The End of the Beginning for Crypto | Michael Anderson & Vance Spencer of Framework Ventures
How to Position & Prepare Yourself for the End Game | Grant Williams
Global Food Shortages & the Need for Energy Security | Doomberg
How to Survive in the New Economic & Financial Order | Russell Napier
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Commercial Edge: Unleash the Power of People
The emPOWERed Half Hour
Aligned Money Show
Gorse Culture PODcast : The H.R. Detective Agency!
HCI Leadership Revolution
The Ramsey Show
Planet Money