Democratic Public Finance
Democratic Public Finance: A Radical Vision for Mamdani’s New York City
This document elaborates an emerging economic paradigm that is already latent in Zohran Mamdani’s plans and practices. The paradigm, which we call Democratic Public Finance (DPF), reframes money as an inexhaustible and malleable public institution. According to DPF, money is public credit, a capacious tool for mobilizing everyone’s capacities to meet our needs and build a desirable future. Contrary to economic orthodoxy, this paradigm redefines politics as the process of coordinating our abundant human and material resources within ecological limits, rather than exploitative competition for scarce funds. DPF is the process of making collective capacities visible, organizing them democratically, and enabling us to care for each other. Understood in this way, DPF discloses previously invisible possibilities for communal well-being and denaturalizes the impoverished suppositions that legitimize fiscal obstruction by establishment liberals, conservatives, and right-wing demagogues alike.
See below for more of our work on Democratic Public Finance
Zooming in on the Loop
By Tyler Suksawat & Scott Ferguson In previous writings, we advanced an inventive new model for municipal finance: what we call the Seattle Loop. By establishing a city-owned public bank, we propose, Seattle can not only expand public investment through municipal lending and provide residents with low-cost financial services; it can also purchase its own…
A Dvar Torah on the Subject of Democratic Public Finance
By Anna Minsky The following speech was read on March 28th at a progressive New York City synagogue, a guest sermon by one of the congregants. In the Jewish tradition, each week we read one part (a “parsha”) of the Torah (the first five books of the bible) aloud in Hebrew. Then someone, often a…
Reparative Internationalism
Toward an International Democratic Public Finance Framework By Will Beaman The liberal international order faces a crisis of legitimacy, and the struggle to define its aftermath is already being organized through competing visions of global order. In the present turn, the far right has seized that terrain to stage a false choice: either accept imperial…
Animal Spirits and Public Promises: Phantom Beavers and the Politics of Monetary Design
By Rob Hawkes There is a spectre haunting Nigel Farage. The spectre of a beaver. On 11 March 2026, the Bank of England announced that, following a public consultation, its next series of banknotes will feature images of the UK’s wildlife in place of historical figures, which have adorned our currency since the 1970s. Mr.…
Fiscal Chronotopes: #ZcavengerHunt, the Zetro Card, and the New Finance Franchise
By Will Beaman This essay is lightly adapted from a talk delivered at the 2026 American Comparative Literature Association conference. It contributes to a growing body of endogenous money theorization that we at Money on the Left call Democratic Public Finance (DPF). DPF begins from the distributed and publicly mediated character of political-economic life, approaching…
Reclaiming the Public Interest: Cities Should Sell Municipal Bonds to Their Own Public Banks
By Tyler Suksawat & Scott Ferguson Editor’s Note: The following essay, originally published on February 22, 2026, offers a foundational theoretical framework for what has since been concretized as The Seattle Loop. The Seattle Loop is a fiscal strategy that utilizes municipal banking to purchase city debt, “looping” interest payments back into public provisions like…
Graeber’s Utopia of Refusal
Will Beaman joins Billy Saas & Scott Ferguson to discuss the enduring influence of David Graeber’s debt-centered work in the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s election to Mayor of New York City. Will and Scott unpack their jointly authored essay, “The Utopia of Refusal: David Graeber, Debt & the Left Monetary Imagination,” which is the latest…
Touch Grass, Touchscreens, and Public Design
By Will Beaman A small design story from May 2025 has been making the rounds on my newsfeed, about how car manufacturers are re-embracing physical buttons after years of migrating controls onto touchscreens. The given reason is practical, not nostalgic: glass-only interfaces increase cognitive load and reduce safety, and safety-rating criteria are beginning to incentivize…
Zack Polanski’s Bold Politics Requires an Even Bolder Economic Vision: The Case for Democratic Public Finance
by Rob Hawkes The Green Party of England and Wales is attracting new members in unprecedented numbers and achieving polling percentages that would have seemed impossible a year ago. However, tensions are building behind the scenes over the party’s economic programme. On December 12, 2025, just over 3 months since Zack Polanski’s election as party…
Beyond Loans: The Public Grant-Making Bank
By the Money on the Left Editorial Collective Public banking has been gaining traction for years, driven by a growing recognition that our current financial system often fails to serve the public good. The Bank of North Dakota has operated successfully for over a century, and states like New York have recently seen legislation proposed…
Democratic Public Finance
Billy Saas and Scott Ferguson are joined by Will Beaman to discuss Money on the Left’s framework for what we call “Democratic Public Finance” (DPF). According to this paradigm, money is public credit, a capacious tool for mobilizing everyone’s capacities to meet our needs and build a desirable future. DPF redefines politics as the process…
Democratic Public Finance: A Radical Vision for Mamdani’s New York City
Summary This document elaborates an emerging economic paradigm that is already latent in Zohran Mamdani’s plans and practices. The paradigm, which we call Democratic Public Finance (DPF), reframes money as an inexhaustible and malleable public institution. According to DPF, money is public credit, a capacious tool for mobilizing everyone’s capacities to meet our needs and…
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