"Who is sovereign in the modern state? working like a detective to trace the historical roots of the current financial and budgetary crisis and the interplay between markets and government action, Joseph Vogl gives a politically explosive answer to this question." —<b>Jury, Leipzig Bookfair Prize<br /><br /></b> "A bold and clever treatise on political economy... A lively debate of the issues raised by this book would be greatly welcomed, being in its essence a debate about the image of the West... and how we might live under great fiscal uncertainty." —<b>Suddeutsche Zeitung</b><br /><br /> "With stunning erudition Vogl explores the dark corners of the neoliberal political economy, where states fuse with finance and the public power is simultaneously marketized and de-democratized. Anchored in a concise history of the modern state and its claims to sovereignty, Vogl's analysis focuses on the strangest creation of modern capitalism, money." —<b>Wolfgang Streeck, emeritus director, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne<br /><br /></b> "It is no overstatement to call this book groundbreaking. In <i>The Ascendancy of Finance</i>, Joseph Vogl recasts nearly half a millennia of economic history to argue that the symbiosis of the finance and political spheres is longstanding, and that the informalization of policy-making, as seen most dramatically in 2008, threatens to bypass democracy. Indispensable reading, and, in these tumultuous times, the Ascendancy of Finance is both illuminating and chilling." —<b>Janine Wedel, George Mason University<br /></b> <p>"In elegant historical-institutionalist fashion, Vogl recounts the long story of modern money’s development, tracing the co-evolution of sovereign states and financial markets—each needing the other in defence of its own credit and credibility."<b>—Wolfgang Streeck in <i>New Left Review</i></b></p> <b><br /><br /></b>