Money, Modernism & Inflation in The Great Gatsby

Invisible Republic (With Apologies to Greil Marcus)

Scott Ferguson speaks with Mario Rendina about the politics of public employment and training in the United States as they shifted over the course of the late 20th century. moneyontheleft.org/2026/07/02/p...

While standard critiques of the barter myth emphasize its lack of empirical support, this article advances a more capacious approach that situates the myth within the conceptual formation of economic modernity itself. moneyontheleft.org/2026/06/20/t...

"Reparations should be recognized by central banking and public finance institutions as a permanent public obligation capable of capitalizing the institutions charged with carrying it out."

"While amending the Public Banking Act would represent a top-down approach to securing Fed membership for nonprofit col­leges and universities, campus currencies would organize toward Fed accommodation from the bottom up."

Isn’t Money Weird?

"Private financial claims should remain enforceable only insofar as they do not undermine the standing promises a democracy makes to the people it governs. And that means giving democratic commitments institutional form."

"Today, promises to private creditors are treated as inviolable while democratic commitments ... are treated as mere aspirations to be fulfilled only sometimes as discretionary expenditures. Euthanizing the rentier begins with inverting this hierarchy."

This article originally appeared in 2001 as “Le troc primitif, un mythe fondateur d’une approche économiste de la monnaie,” Revue numismatique 157: 15–32. We thank the author for permission to publish this translation. moneyontheleft.org/2026/06/20/t...

"Here, we take a more granular approach to some of the Loop’s key operations—capitalization and maintaining reserve balances—zooming in, as it were, to address logistical specificities that our broader model facilitates."

I Think You’re What’s Wrong With Me: On Influence, Absorption, and Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love’

In the Loop: Revolutionizing Public Finance rejects the defensive, austerity-driven mindset of “finding the money” and instead reclaims public finance as a problem of legal, social, and democratic design. moneyontheleft.org/in-the-loop/

The episode examines how One Battle, which draws loose inspiration from Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, deliberately removes specific historical markers to place the story in an ambiguous present of ongoing revolution and counter-revolution.

Weird Epistemologies of Money and Trust in Fitzgerald, Ford, and Larsen; or, Isn’t Money Weird?

"Fiscal rules should measure whether spending creates and sustains real capacities, rather than treating all public outlays as costs. Record jobs, functioning institutions, public knowledge, and social stability as assets and capacities, not as costs."

Public Employment & Training from the Great Society to the “End of Welfare as We Know It” moneyontheleft.org/2026/07/02/p...

The Ontology of the Monetary Image

How Cities Can Evaluate Public Investment Without Bond Markets

Birth of the Neoliberal Blockbuster

Contesting the End of India’s Job Guarantee with Khush Vachhrajani moneyontheleft.org/2026/03/01/c...

We talk with Tyler Creighton about life at the CFPB under the leadership of Vought, central architect of the notorious Project 2025 document and avowed opponent of the agency he now directs. moneyontheleft.org/2026/02/01/d...

Get In the Loop.

"The image at the top of this essay is the ‘Weird Pride’ flag, co-created in 2021 by autistic writers, advocates & community organisers Fergus Murray & Quinn Dexter for the first Weird Pride Day, ‘a day for people to embrace their weirdness, and reject the stigma associated with being weird’."

Ask your doctor about our Easy 7-Step Program.

"It ravages decades of training, accrued and accredited knowledge, and publicly funded research. It abandons generations of students as the campuses and scholarly communities we invite them to join become, in multiple senses, impoverished."

Reparative Internationalism

Our conversation centers on One Battle After Another's contribution to popular political cinema under the authoritarian violence of the second Trump administration.

"The barter hypothesis makes it possible to imagine value as emerging outside of and prior to money." moneyontheleft.org/2026/06/20/t...

In the Loop: Revolutionizing Public Finance rejects the defensive, austerity-driven mindset of “finding the money” and instead reclaims public finance as a problem of legal, social, and democratic design. moneyontheleft.org/2026/06/13/i...

The Public Banking Institute moneyontheleft.org/2026/06/01/t...

"We’re approving projects that are for the public good." moneyontheleft.org/2026/07/02/p...

Click or swipe to explore the animated pamphlet.

"Call it the Catfight Economy"

"[I]t means establishing a hierarchy of public promises. Employment, housing, health, education, climate obligations, reparations, and basic public services become primary public commitments. When private financial promises conflict with this, they’re restructured and/or written off completely."

"As I hope to demonstrate in this essay, ... , money is much weirder and more capacious than the austere and exclusionary monetary politics that’s now threatening the future of our universities (and much more besides) will ever allow."

YES! Defending tenants rights AND the humanities at the same time?! They say it couldn't be done. Behold the brilliance & courage of @antoniamarrero.bsky.social. 🥰

Bang the drum: #DemocraticPublicFinance can revitalize NYCHA & #SaveSection9. It is my HOPE that @mayor.nyc.gov will explore the #DPF model your team advances via @moneyontheleft.bsky.social & @bdlimm.myatproto.social was just talking about the vital importance of NYCHA: bsky.app/profile/bdli...

The Barter Myth & the Conceptual Foundations of Economic Modernity moneyontheleft.org/2026/06/20/t...

"Keynes’s metaphor permits a more capacious program than interest-rate management alone. Read today, amid the renewed possibility of left governance after Trump, the 'euthanasia of the rentier' can be taken up as a deeper provocation."

“Rather than asking how to protect democracy from finance, we must ask how to redesign finance so that democratic commitments become the highest-priority promises in the system.”

Fiscal Chronotopes: #ZcavengerHunt, the Zetro Card, and the New Finance Franchise

The Public Banking Institute moneyontheleft.org/2026/06/01/t...

"The story the culture wants to tell about Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift is All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950): the adoring ingénue who studies the star, learns her moves, and then slips the knife in."

"Fiscal rules should measure whether spending creates and sustains real capacities, rather than treating all public outlays as costs. Record jobs, functioning institutions, public knowledge, and social stability as assets and capacities, not as costs."

“There are other ways to tell if an investment is sustainable than if it makes money for a rich person.” Whether it makes money for a rich person should be the last thing we consider unless, of course, we ignore it altogether. I’ve long suspected that the primary purpose ...

Yes! I love the reframing of money’s promise here. As an IOU, money is much more powerful if we collectively organize its promise and coordinate how to deliver on said promise.

from activist humanists to neoliberal blockbusters!

Read the article version! It's the same as the thread but with a new lede that talks briefly about Keynes. And who reads threads anyway! @moneyontheleft.bsky.social

"Rather than asking how to protect democracy from finance, we must ask how to redesign finance so that democratic commitments become the highest-priority promises in the system."