James Owen Weatherall Interview

What’s the book The Physics of Wall Street all about?

The Physics of Wall Street tells the story of how, over the last hundred years, an increasing number of ideas—and, since the late 1970s, people as well—from fields such as physics and mathematics have migrated to finance.   These new ideas have changed how financial markets work in profound and lasting ways, and so if we want to understand financial markets, as investors or as policy-makers, we need to understand the role that physics and mathematics has come to play.  Most importantly, I argue that, if used carefully, these ideas can provide very effective tools for investors. But they also introduce significant new risks, including some that contributed to the 2007-08 financial crisis.  One of my main goals in the book is to give some insight into how we can use these tools more effectively, and hopefully avoid future crises.

Brett Scott Interview

Can you tell us about your background working in Finance and how did you come with the idea of writing The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance – Hacking the Future of Money book?

In 2008 I undertook a somewhat subversive anthropological adventure into the financial sector in London. I ended up working for two years as a derivatives broker. Derivatives are large financial bets, and brokers spend all their time trying to convince large corporations and banks to use them. I learned a lot about the financial system and since leaving have continued to explore various aspects of the system. In the wake of the Occupy protests I was asked by Pluto Press to write a guide for activists on how the financial sector works, and how one can go about improving it.

Charles Eisenstein Interview

1. You say that money needs a transformation with a profound effect from profanity to sacredness. What’s behind the concept of Sacred Economics?

The book starts with the observation that money is not aligned with what is becoming sacred to us, for example ecological healing and social justice. In the past, we have just taken that opposition for granted. We assumed that goodness, sacredness, and so forth were outside the money realm, that holy people don't have much to do with money. But this is no longer sustainable, because the behavior that money drives is destroying the planet. We need to change the nature of money, so that it is no longer the enemy of sustainability, not to mention the sacred. The book describes how we got to our current state of a crisis that won't quite go away, and how we can change the money system and the economy that embeds it. It also explores the personal and community dimensions of this transition.