Today, states’ ability to borrow private capital depends on stringent evaluations of their creditworthiness. While many presume that this has long been the case, Quentin Bruneau argues that it is a surprisingly recent phenomenon—the outcome of a pivotal shift in the social composition of financial markets. Investigating the financiers involved in lending capital to sovereigns over the past two centuries, Bruneau identifies profound changes in their identities, goals, and forms of knowledge. He shows how an old world made up of merchant banking families pursuing both profit and status gradually gave way to a new one dominated by large companies, such as joint stock banks and credit rating agencies, exclusively pursuing profit. Lacking the web of personal ties to sovereigns across the world that their established rivals possessed, these financial institutions began relying on a different form of knowledge created to describe and compare states through quantifiable data: statistics. Over the course of this epochal shift, which only came to an end a few decades ago, financial markets thus reconceptualized states. Instead of a set of individuals to be known in person, they became numbers on a page. Raising new questions about the history of sovereign lending, this book illuminates the nature of the relationship between states and financial markets today—and suggests that it may be on the cusp of another major transformation.

In The New Masters of Capital, Timothy J. Sinclair examines a key aspect of the global economy—the rating agencies. In the global economy, trust is formalized in the daily operations of such firms as Moody's and Standard & Poor's, which continuously monitor the financial health of bond-issuers ranging from private corporations to local and national governments. Their judgments affect unimaginably large sums, approximately $30 trillion in outstanding debt issues, according to a recent Moody's estimate. The difference between an AA and a BB rating may cost millions of dollars in interest payments or determine if a corporation or government can even issue bonds Without bond rating agencies, there would be no standard means to compare risks in the global economy, and international investment would be problematic. Most observers assume that the agencies are neutral and scientific, and that they interpret their role in narrowly economic terms. But these agencies, by their nature, wield extraordinary power and exert massive influence over public policy. Sinclair offers a highly accessible account of these institutions, their origins, and the rating processes they use to judge creditworthiness. Illustrated with a wide range of cases, this book offers a fresh assessment of the role of an often-overlooked institution in the dynamics of modern global capitalism.

Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist and socialist revolutionary. It is hard to think of many who have had as much influence in the creation of the modern world. In addition to his overtly philosophical early work, his later writings have many points of contact with contemporary philosophical debates, especially in the philosophy of history and the social sciences, and in moral and political philosophy. Historical materialism — Marx’s theory of history — is centered around the idea that forms of society rise and fall as they further and then impede the development of human productive power. Marx’s economic analysis of capitalism is based on his version of the labour theory of value, and includes the analysis of capitalist profit as the extraction of surplus value from the exploited proletariat. Marx sees the historical process as proceeding through a necessary series of modes of production, characterized by class struggle, culminating in communism. Content Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, 1843 On the Jewish Question, 1843 The Holy Family, 1845 Theses on Feuerbach, 1845 The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847 Wage Labour and Capital, 1847 Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848 The Class Struggles in France, 1850 Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, 1852 A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859 Marx’s Inaugural Address Capital

"Containing cases decided by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania." (varies)

Acts for 1849 and 1855 contain Senate and House journals.