Making Money

What is money? Where does it come from? Who makes our money today? And how can we understand the current state of our economy as a crisis of money itself?

In Making Money, Ole Bjerg turns these questions into a matter of philosophical rather than economic analysis. Using the thinking of Slavoj Žižek, while still engaging with mainstream economic literature, the book provides a genuinely philosophical theory of money. This theory is unfolded in reflections on the nature of monetary phenomenon such as financial markets, banks, debt, credit, derivatives, gold, risk, value, price, interests, and arbitrage. The analysis of money is put into an historical context by suggesting that the current financial turbulence and debt crisis are symptoms that we live in the age of post-credit capitalism. By bridging the fields of economics and contemporary philosophy, Bjerg's work engages in a productive form of intellectual arbitrage.“With its explosive combination of philosophy, economics, and Lacanian psychoanalysis, Bjerg’s book provides an absolutely indispensable guide through the labyrinth of economics. It makes us fully aware of thecrazy world we live in. It is a kind of theoretical equivalent of a science fiction filmin which we discover that aliens are already among us and are controlling us.”
—Slavoj Žižek

“Ole Bjerg provides us with a brilliant philosophical examination of this phenomenon that we call ‘money’ … This book should be onthe reading list of all economists, bankers, civil servants, politicians and, most importantly, of all citizens if we are to stand any chance of overcoming the deep dysfunctions of themoney and banking system that were drama-tically revealed by their near collapse in 2008.”
—Tony Greenham, Head of Finance and Business at New Economics Foundation and co-author of Where Does Money Come From? Ole Bjerg is an Associate Professor at the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School. His previous works include Poker: The Parody of Capitalism (2011) as well as the three books in Danish.