Book Talk | Michael McCarthy | The Master’s Tools: How Finance Wrecked Democracy (And a Radical Plan to Rebuild It)

Join the Institute for Public Knowledge and the Remarque Institute on Wednesday, November 5 (5:30-7:00 PM) for an event with Michael McCarthy. He will discuss his book The Master’s Tools: How Finance Wrecked Democracy (And a Radical Plan to Rebuild It) with Shahin Vallée.

Michael A. McCarthy is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of Community Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His research is on class, capitalism, and democracy. His first book Dismantling Solidarity: Capitalist Politics and American Pensions was published with Cornell University Press in 2017 and was awarded the Paul Sweezy Book Award as well as an honorable mention for the Labor and Labor Movements Book Award. His most recent book is The Master’s Tools: How Finance Wrecked Democracy (and a Radical Plan to Rebuild It). In addition to academic publishing, his work has been featured in Boston Review, The Guardian, Hammer & Hope, Jacobin, The New York Times, The New Left Review, and The Washington Post.

Shahin Vallée is head of DGAP’s Geo-Economics Program. Prior to that, he was a senior fellow in DGAP’s Alfred von Oppenheim Center for European Policy Studies. Until June 2018, Vallée was a senior economist for Soros Fund Management, where he worked on a wide range of political and economic issues. He also served as a personal advisor to George Soros. Prior to that, he was the economic advisor to Emmanuel Macron at the French Ministry for the Economy and Finance, where he focused on European economic affairs. Between 2012 and 2014, Vallée was the economic advisor to President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy. This experience has put him at the heart of European economic policy discussions since 2012, in particular on issues related to the euro area and international policy coordination (IMF, G20). Having started his career working for social investment vehicles and entrepreneurship in Africa, he has also worked as a visiting fellow at Bruegel, a Brussels-based economic think tank, and as an economist for a global investment bank in London. Vallée is currently completing a PhD in political economy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He holds a master’s degree from Columbia University in New York, a degree in public affairs from Sciences Po in Paris, and an undergraduate degree in econometrics from the Sorbonne.