Introducing: The Seattle Loop
We are thrilled to share a sneak peek at the Seattle Loop, a fiscal strategy for generating public money for urgent needs in and beyond the city of Seattle. The Strategy: By establishing a municipal bank, Seattle can purchase its own debt and “loop” the interest back to the city instead of to private creditors. In addition to providing residents…
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.…
The Ontology of the Monetary Image: Référance and Reconstruction
By Will Beaman Money is often introduced in critical theory as a problem. It appears as the medium that makes unlike things commensurable by reducing them to sameness, the abstraction that removes social life from the conditions that give it substance, or the sign that circulates by displacing the relations on which it depends. In…
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…
Out of the Shadows: Public Banking for Municipal Finance
By Tyler Suksawat & Scott Ferguson In a recent essay, we advanced a proposal for sub-federal governments to sell municipal bonds to their own public banks. We took the city as our primary point of departure, but the same lessons are applicable to U.S. counties and states. Establishing a public bank that regularly purchases municipal…
Democratic Finance for New York City’s Budget Dance
By David I. Backer I’m a professor of education policy and teach classes on public finance. I make it my business to know the government’s business, and I live in Brooklyn, so I’ve been paying close attention to the city’s finances as the new Mamdani administration takes power. In my work, like my recent book…
Reclaiming the Public Interest: Cities Should Sell Municipal Bonds to Their Own Public Banks
By Tyler Suksawat & Scott Ferguson What chance do local governments have in fighting authoritarian austerity, especially when they are left to rely on feckless legislators at the state and federal levels who refuse to push back? Right now, we see austerity budgets appearing across every institution and major employer in the U.S. If the…
Women, Safety, and Moral Panic: From Private Protection to Public Responsibility in India
By Dr. Shikha Chandarana For decades, women’s safety in India has been treated like a private problem with public consequences: a daughter warned to “come home early,” a student told to “stay alert,” a working woman advised to “dress carefully,” a survivor asked what she did to “invite” it. The country has learned to speak…
The Challenge of Reporting on Trump (Parody)
By Gideon Fairchild Editor’s note: The author is a fictional composite of several real guys with real New York publishing jobs. I have been told—gently, as one tells a sleepwalker not to step off the roof—that I should “just write about Trump.” As if it were that simple. As if Trump were an object you…
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…
The Utopia of Refusal: David Graeber, Debt & the Left Monetary Imagination
by Will Beaman & Scott Ferguson Note: David Graeber leaves behind a rich and complex body of work that remains influential for leftist thought and practice. Since his passing in 2020, however, most assessments of his work have been strongly affirmative and hence often one-sided. What follows is a more critical engagement, offered in the…
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…
Mamdani Win Could Be The First Step Towards Seizing The Means of Knowledge Production (Let CUNY Socialize EdTech for All of Us)
by Matt Seybold This essay originally appeared on Matt Seybold’s The American Vandal Substack. We are grateful for his generous permission to republish it here. An understandable response to the most-publicized outcome of yesterday’s election—Zohran Mamdani becoming Mayor-Elect of New York City—is to ask, however you feel about Mamdani, what impact does it have on…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
About the Vertical
Our vertical publishes essays on critical theory, media culture & aesthetics that are committed to unconditional inclusion and intersectional politics.