Robert Guttmann | Hofstra University (original) (raw)

Papers by Robert Guttmann

Research paper thumbnail of Cooperation vs. Competition in a World of Adversarial Power Centers

Springer eBooks, Dec 4, 2021

Research paper thumbnail of The Financial Underpinnings of Slow Growth

Research paper thumbnail of The Challenge of Climate Change

With Trump US voters elected a climate denier to the White House whose systematic dismantlement o... more With Trump US voters elected a climate denier to the White House whose systematic dismantlement of Obama’s climate policies bucks a global trend to tackle this issue more seriously. Thanks to the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change we have overwhelming evidence of rapidly growing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and their nefarious implications for the climate. Global warming, itself unevenly distributed, has already begun to intensify storms and droughts, make sea levels rise, melt glaciers, reduce biodiversity, and hamper agricultural yields. After a quarter of century of stop-go efforts to address this issue, the world community of nations finally decided in December 2015 at a meeting in Paris to address this issue in systemic fashion with a long-run plan for increasingly ambitious collective action—the Paris Climate Agreement.

Research paper thumbnail of The Legacy of Reaganomics

Research paper thumbnail of The Economy in Transition

Research paper thumbnail of The Global Emergence of Climate Policy

Springer eBooks, 2018

When analyzing the climate policies of countries, as put forth in so-called Nationally Determined... more When analyzing the climate policies of countries, as put forth in so-called Nationally Determined Contributions, we see that the world is nowhere near meeting its ≤ 2 °C objective. One striking example of policy failure is the USA, currently headed by a climate denier who has taken the largest per capita emitter of CO2 out of the Paris Agreement. In contrast to Trump, California has reinforced its climate policies as model for the rest of the world. So have other climate-policy leaders, notably China and France. Companies too seek to contribute to the struggle against global warming, as exemplified by Microsoft’s global carbon fee, Tesla’s product development, or Google’s Sidewalk Labs planning the city of the future. These developments will be dwarfed by much more radical approaches to organizing, say, traffic, agriculture, or waste management in the not-so-distant future.

Research paper thumbnail of Toward a True Form of World Money

Research paper thumbnail of Virus economics: an American tragedy

Revue de la régulation, Feb 10, 2021

The world seemed largely distracted with more mundane matters when a new coronavirus, labelled SA... more The world seemed largely distracted with more mundane matters when a new coronavirus, labelled SARS-CoV-2, appeared in late 2019 in Wuhan (China) and then, superbly adapted for human-to-human transmission, launched its planetary march of exponential spread in January 2020. We should have been better prepared for the possibility of a global pandemic even though the last such occurrence of comparable danger happened over a century ago-the "Spanish Flu" of 1918/19. Signs of an impending pandemic have abounded in recent years, with five near misses over the last couple of decades-SARS in 2002, the bird flu in 2005, the swine flu in 2009, MERS in 2012, and Ebola in 2014/15. This heightened threat of pandemics is consequence of stressors our modern capitalist economies have put on the environment altering the relationship between humans and animals-the accelerating destruction of our planet's biodiversity, erosion of wildlife habitats, animal commerce, increased meat consumption, and changing patterns of movement by certain animals key to the production of new viruses and their zoonotic transmission, notably bats. The sad truth is that, even beyond the new coronavirus, the world will remain susceptible to recurrent pandemics as global threat which makes today's experience an important trial run for future episodes. From an epidemiological point of view, the new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is a formidable foe. It is highly transmissible by inter-personal contact, as an airborne aerosol, or even touch of surface. It spreads often unbeknownst to the carrier who may not be aware they carry the virus (up to 40 percent of infected humans are asymptomatic) or may not have yet developed symptoms of Covid-19 (whose incubation period ranges typically from five to ten days). 1 If unchecked, one person will on average infect three others, for a basic reproduction number R0 ("R naught") ≥ 3 assuring an exponential rate of transmission: 1-> 3-> 9-> 27-> 81-> 243-> 729 1 Covid-19 is the official WHO-designated name for the disease symptoms associated with infection by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which include most commonly high fever, cough, loss of appetite, shortness of breath, fatigue, loss of smell or taste, and muscle or joint pains. We are still getting to know the wide array of often life-threatening complications that may arise from Covid-19, including pneumonia, sceptic shock, liver damage or heart failure. infrastructure, r educed inequality, sustainable cities and communities, responsible consumption and production, climate action, life below water, life on land, peace and justice strong institutions, and partnerships to achieve the goal.

Research paper thumbnail of Basel II: A New Regulatory Framework for Global Banking

With recent turmoil in financial markets around the world, this unique and up-to-date book addres... more With recent turmoil in financial markets around the world, this unique and up-to-date book addresses a number of challenging issues regarding monetary policy, financial markets and macroeconomic policy.

Research paper thumbnail of Suzanne de Brunhoff et les rélations monétaires internationales

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Sep 1, 2018

International audienc

Research paper thumbnail of The Transformation of Banking

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2018

Research paper thumbnail of 翻訳 信用貨幣はどのようにして経済を形作るか--グローバル・システム下のアメリカ(1)

Research paper thumbnail of The New Face of Finance

Having gone through a systemic crisis, finance-led capitalism is at a threshold—and with it the f... more Having gone through a systemic crisis, finance-led capitalism is at a threshold—and with it the future of global markets. Even though critics on the political Left complain that the crisis has rendered finance even more concentrated and reregulation has left its basic structure intact, much has changed since those fateful days of 2008. Transnational banks, the stalwarts of global finance, are still bearing the wounds of this traumatic period. Weakened by heavy losses, these banks are now dealing with a huge regulatory remake while trying to pass stress tests and cope with destroyed reputations. The banks are on the defense and in retreat, trying to figure out the right kind of product mix that can pass muster with impatient shareholders and more watchful regulators. This leaves an opening for smaller, more nimble institutions taking away market share from traditional banks whose do-it-all strategy had turned them into dysfunctional conglomerates long ago. But the gradual decline of universal banking, evidenced by the postcrisis retreat of so many once-leading banks, poses a question that may even contain a momentous opportunity: what is to become of finance-led capitalism and how can we harness the undeniable power of finance for better uses?

Research paper thumbnail of Eco-Capitalism

Springer eBooks, 2018

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.

Research paper thumbnail of Globalização financeira e perspectivas pós-crise

Tornou-se evidente, pelo menos desde setembro de 2008, que estamos atravessando uma grave crise. ... more Tornou-se evidente, pelo menos desde setembro de 2008, que estamos atravessando uma grave crise. Hoje, vivenciamos uma crise sistêmica, um distúrbio muito mais grave que coloca em cheque o funcionamento do sistema capitalista. Este tipo de crise ocorre quando alterações estruturais no modus operandi deste sistema geram desequilíbrios, que, na ausência de autocorreção, explodem com força paralisante. Este artigo tem por objetivo analisar as três grandes crises passadas (1873-1879, 1929-1939 e 1979-1982), identificando padrões de comportamento, sobre o que têm em comum, que podem nos ajudar a descobrir o que está acontecendo hoje.

Research paper thumbnail of Three Generations of Cybercash

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2003

While we are still some years away from a universal electronic-payments system that is widely use... more While we are still some years away from a universal electronic-payments system that is widely used for e-commerce on the internet, it behoves us to take a closer look at ongoing cybercash experiments. Even in this embryonic stage we can get a glimpse of a future in which cybercash will have become a dominant money form.1

Research paper thumbnail of The Collapse of Securitization: From Subprimes to Global Credit Crunch

Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, Mar 31, 2011

... It is worth noting here that key Democrats, notably Barack Obama in the Senate and Barney Fra... more ... It is worth noting here that key Democrats, notably Barack Obama in the Senate and Barney Frank in the House, are pushing to ... In June 2007, Moody's and Standard & Poor's downgraded hundreds of securities based on subprime loans, many of them now below investment ...

Research paper thumbnail of Finance-Led Capitalism

Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks, 2016

In Finance-Led Capitalism , bestselling author and economist Robert Guttmann provides a new conce... more In Finance-Led Capitalism , bestselling author and economist Robert Guttmann provides a new conceptual framework to assess the dominate role of modern finance within the workings of our contemporary economic system. This lively and provocative read will challenge some of the core beliefs about modern finance and the world economy.

Research paper thumbnail of Shadow Banking as Network Finance

In 2007/08, when the world faced one of the greatest financial crises in history, almost no one a... more In 2007/08, when the world faced one of the greatest financial crises in history, almost no one among economists, bankers, or government officials anywhere had seen this one coming. Why? It was not just the optimism prevailing after so many years of a Goldilocks economy or the orthodoxy’s blind spot when it comes to finance in their models. More troubling was the fact that the crisis had exploded underground, in the part of the plumbing system of the economy that was hidden even from the professionals’ eyes. Now that we have put this traumatic experience behind us and enjoy the fruits of a (finally) solid recovery, we still must wonder whether such a hit out of the blue can recur. Or have we learned enough about the last crisis and the locus of its origination not to repeat the same mistakes?

Research paper thumbnail of Cybercash

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2003

Research paper thumbnail of Cooperation vs. Competition in a World of Adversarial Power Centers

Springer eBooks, Dec 4, 2021

Research paper thumbnail of The Financial Underpinnings of Slow Growth

Research paper thumbnail of The Challenge of Climate Change

With Trump US voters elected a climate denier to the White House whose systematic dismantlement o... more With Trump US voters elected a climate denier to the White House whose systematic dismantlement of Obama’s climate policies bucks a global trend to tackle this issue more seriously. Thanks to the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change we have overwhelming evidence of rapidly growing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and their nefarious implications for the climate. Global warming, itself unevenly distributed, has already begun to intensify storms and droughts, make sea levels rise, melt glaciers, reduce biodiversity, and hamper agricultural yields. After a quarter of century of stop-go efforts to address this issue, the world community of nations finally decided in December 2015 at a meeting in Paris to address this issue in systemic fashion with a long-run plan for increasingly ambitious collective action—the Paris Climate Agreement.

Research paper thumbnail of The Legacy of Reaganomics

Research paper thumbnail of The Economy in Transition

Research paper thumbnail of The Global Emergence of Climate Policy

Springer eBooks, 2018

When analyzing the climate policies of countries, as put forth in so-called Nationally Determined... more When analyzing the climate policies of countries, as put forth in so-called Nationally Determined Contributions, we see that the world is nowhere near meeting its ≤ 2 °C objective. One striking example of policy failure is the USA, currently headed by a climate denier who has taken the largest per capita emitter of CO2 out of the Paris Agreement. In contrast to Trump, California has reinforced its climate policies as model for the rest of the world. So have other climate-policy leaders, notably China and France. Companies too seek to contribute to the struggle against global warming, as exemplified by Microsoft’s global carbon fee, Tesla’s product development, or Google’s Sidewalk Labs planning the city of the future. These developments will be dwarfed by much more radical approaches to organizing, say, traffic, agriculture, or waste management in the not-so-distant future.

Research paper thumbnail of Toward a True Form of World Money

Research paper thumbnail of Virus economics: an American tragedy

Revue de la régulation, Feb 10, 2021

The world seemed largely distracted with more mundane matters when a new coronavirus, labelled SA... more The world seemed largely distracted with more mundane matters when a new coronavirus, labelled SARS-CoV-2, appeared in late 2019 in Wuhan (China) and then, superbly adapted for human-to-human transmission, launched its planetary march of exponential spread in January 2020. We should have been better prepared for the possibility of a global pandemic even though the last such occurrence of comparable danger happened over a century ago-the "Spanish Flu" of 1918/19. Signs of an impending pandemic have abounded in recent years, with five near misses over the last couple of decades-SARS in 2002, the bird flu in 2005, the swine flu in 2009, MERS in 2012, and Ebola in 2014/15. This heightened threat of pandemics is consequence of stressors our modern capitalist economies have put on the environment altering the relationship between humans and animals-the accelerating destruction of our planet's biodiversity, erosion of wildlife habitats, animal commerce, increased meat consumption, and changing patterns of movement by certain animals key to the production of new viruses and their zoonotic transmission, notably bats. The sad truth is that, even beyond the new coronavirus, the world will remain susceptible to recurrent pandemics as global threat which makes today's experience an important trial run for future episodes. From an epidemiological point of view, the new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is a formidable foe. It is highly transmissible by inter-personal contact, as an airborne aerosol, or even touch of surface. It spreads often unbeknownst to the carrier who may not be aware they carry the virus (up to 40 percent of infected humans are asymptomatic) or may not have yet developed symptoms of Covid-19 (whose incubation period ranges typically from five to ten days). 1 If unchecked, one person will on average infect three others, for a basic reproduction number R0 ("R naught") ≥ 3 assuring an exponential rate of transmission: 1-> 3-> 9-> 27-> 81-> 243-> 729 1 Covid-19 is the official WHO-designated name for the disease symptoms associated with infection by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which include most commonly high fever, cough, loss of appetite, shortness of breath, fatigue, loss of smell or taste, and muscle or joint pains. We are still getting to know the wide array of often life-threatening complications that may arise from Covid-19, including pneumonia, sceptic shock, liver damage or heart failure. infrastructure, r educed inequality, sustainable cities and communities, responsible consumption and production, climate action, life below water, life on land, peace and justice strong institutions, and partnerships to achieve the goal.

Research paper thumbnail of Basel II: A New Regulatory Framework for Global Banking

With recent turmoil in financial markets around the world, this unique and up-to-date book addres... more With recent turmoil in financial markets around the world, this unique and up-to-date book addresses a number of challenging issues regarding monetary policy, financial markets and macroeconomic policy.

Research paper thumbnail of Suzanne de Brunhoff et les rélations monétaires internationales

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Sep 1, 2018

International audienc

Research paper thumbnail of The Transformation of Banking

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2018

Research paper thumbnail of 翻訳 信用貨幣はどのようにして経済を形作るか--グローバル・システム下のアメリカ(1)

Research paper thumbnail of The New Face of Finance

Having gone through a systemic crisis, finance-led capitalism is at a threshold—and with it the f... more Having gone through a systemic crisis, finance-led capitalism is at a threshold—and with it the future of global markets. Even though critics on the political Left complain that the crisis has rendered finance even more concentrated and reregulation has left its basic structure intact, much has changed since those fateful days of 2008. Transnational banks, the stalwarts of global finance, are still bearing the wounds of this traumatic period. Weakened by heavy losses, these banks are now dealing with a huge regulatory remake while trying to pass stress tests and cope with destroyed reputations. The banks are on the defense and in retreat, trying to figure out the right kind of product mix that can pass muster with impatient shareholders and more watchful regulators. This leaves an opening for smaller, more nimble institutions taking away market share from traditional banks whose do-it-all strategy had turned them into dysfunctional conglomerates long ago. But the gradual decline of universal banking, evidenced by the postcrisis retreat of so many once-leading banks, poses a question that may even contain a momentous opportunity: what is to become of finance-led capitalism and how can we harness the undeniable power of finance for better uses?

Research paper thumbnail of Eco-Capitalism

Springer eBooks, 2018

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.

Research paper thumbnail of Globalização financeira e perspectivas pós-crise

Tornou-se evidente, pelo menos desde setembro de 2008, que estamos atravessando uma grave crise. ... more Tornou-se evidente, pelo menos desde setembro de 2008, que estamos atravessando uma grave crise. Hoje, vivenciamos uma crise sistêmica, um distúrbio muito mais grave que coloca em cheque o funcionamento do sistema capitalista. Este tipo de crise ocorre quando alterações estruturais no modus operandi deste sistema geram desequilíbrios, que, na ausência de autocorreção, explodem com força paralisante. Este artigo tem por objetivo analisar as três grandes crises passadas (1873-1879, 1929-1939 e 1979-1982), identificando padrões de comportamento, sobre o que têm em comum, que podem nos ajudar a descobrir o que está acontecendo hoje.

Research paper thumbnail of Three Generations of Cybercash

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2003

While we are still some years away from a universal electronic-payments system that is widely use... more While we are still some years away from a universal electronic-payments system that is widely used for e-commerce on the internet, it behoves us to take a closer look at ongoing cybercash experiments. Even in this embryonic stage we can get a glimpse of a future in which cybercash will have become a dominant money form.1

Research paper thumbnail of The Collapse of Securitization: From Subprimes to Global Credit Crunch

Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, Mar 31, 2011

... It is worth noting here that key Democrats, notably Barack Obama in the Senate and Barney Fra... more ... It is worth noting here that key Democrats, notably Barack Obama in the Senate and Barney Frank in the House, are pushing to ... In June 2007, Moody's and Standard & Poor's downgraded hundreds of securities based on subprime loans, many of them now below investment ...

Research paper thumbnail of Finance-Led Capitalism

Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks, 2016

In Finance-Led Capitalism , bestselling author and economist Robert Guttmann provides a new conce... more In Finance-Led Capitalism , bestselling author and economist Robert Guttmann provides a new conceptual framework to assess the dominate role of modern finance within the workings of our contemporary economic system. This lively and provocative read will challenge some of the core beliefs about modern finance and the world economy.

Research paper thumbnail of Shadow Banking as Network Finance

In 2007/08, when the world faced one of the greatest financial crises in history, almost no one a... more In 2007/08, when the world faced one of the greatest financial crises in history, almost no one among economists, bankers, or government officials anywhere had seen this one coming. Why? It was not just the optimism prevailing after so many years of a Goldilocks economy or the orthodoxy’s blind spot when it comes to finance in their models. More troubling was the fact that the crisis had exploded underground, in the part of the plumbing system of the economy that was hidden even from the professionals’ eyes. Now that we have put this traumatic experience behind us and enjoy the fruits of a (finally) solid recovery, we still must wonder whether such a hit out of the blue can recur. Or have we learned enough about the last crisis and the locus of its origination not to repeat the same mistakes?

Research paper thumbnail of Cybercash

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2003