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Open Access
A Global Bond: Explaining the Safe-Haven Status of US Treasury Securities
(2016) Hager, Sandy Brian
This article offers new theoretical and empirical insights to explain the resilience of US Treasury securities as the world’s premier safe or “risk-free” asset. The standard explanation of resilience emphasizes the relative safety of US Treasuries due to a shortage of safe assets in the global political economy. The analysis here goes beyond the standard explanation to highlight the importance of domestic politics in reinforcing the safe status of US Treasury securities. In particular, the research shows how a formidable “bond” of interests unites domestic and foreign owners of the public debt and works to sustain US power in global finance. Foreigners, who now own roughly half of the US public debt, have something to gain from their domestic counterparts. The top 1% of US households, which dominate domestic ownership of US Treasuries, has considerable political clout, thus alleviating foreign concerns about the creditworthiness of the US federal government. Domestic owners, in turn, benefit from the seemingly insatiable foreign appetite for US Treasury securities. In supplying the US federal government and US households with cheap credit, foreign investors in US Treasuries help to deflect challenges to the top 1% within the wealth and income hierarchy.
Open Access
A Podcast Interview with Sandy Hager on Public Debt and Inequality
(2016) Hager, Sandy Brian; Beasley, Betsy; Stein, David
Who owns the U.S. public debt? Why is it such an important commodity in global capitalism? Why does public debt provoke such intense political debate? And how can the quantitative data on the ownership structure of public debt provide insights into these topics? Our guest today, Sandy Hager, reveals answers to all of these questions and more. Duration: 41 minutes
Open Access
A Requiem for Carbon Capitalism?
(2021) Hager, Sandy Brian
The fossil fuels business has fallen on hard times. For years the sector has been mired in a slump due to stubbornly low oil and gas prices, concerns over climate change, as well as technological breakthroughs in renewable energy technologies. With the Covid-19 pandemic dealing a further blow to their fortunes, some media pundits claim that fossil fuels companies are entering a phase of terminal decline. News of the immanent demise of companies responsible for a significant portion of global greenhouse gas emissions might sound like a boon for efforts to avert climate breakdown. But just how bad is the outlook for fossil fuels? In this research note, I offer a preview of findings from a new research project on the financial performance of the fossil fuels sector on a global scale. My research shows that the share of oil, gas and coal companies in global profit and capitalization has steadily decreased over the past half century, while that of alternative energy companies has jumped since 2018. But despite falling distributive shares, what we also find is that the overall magnitude of oil, gas and coal profit and capitalization currently dwarfs that of the alternative energy companies. All signs indicate that capitalists are still, as Tim Di Muzio observed a decade ago, capitalizing a future unsustainable.
Open Access
America's Real 'Debt Dilemma'
(2013) Hager, Sandy Brian
In the wake of the current crisis there has been an explosive rise in the level of the US public debt. These massive levels of public indebtedness are expected to keep growing unless there are drastic changes to existing budgetary policies. According to a recent series in the Financial Times, the US now faces a ‘debt dilemma’ over whether the country should bring its fiscal house in order through tax hikes on the rich or cuts to entitlement programs. This apparent dilemma has sparked a debate over which groups should bear the burden of debt repayment and fiscal adjustment. However, one crucial question remains unasked: whose powerful interests are served by the public debt? Mapping the share of federal bonds holdings of and interest to the top 1%, my research uncovers a staggering trend towards concentration over the past three decades and shows that federal income taxes and transfer payments have done little to offset this regressive distribution. Increases to the public debt without progressive redistributive policies are likely to aggravate an already explosive situation characterized by inequality, while decreases to the privately held portion of the public debt are likely to encounter resistance from the top 1%. This is America’s real debt dilemma.
Open Access
Call for Papers: "The Capitalist Mode of Power: Past, Present, Future"
(2011) Baines, Joseph; Hager, Sandy Brian; Ostoji?, Mladen
The annual conference series organized by the Forum on Capital as Power brings together a diverse range of radically minded people interested in exploring the concept of power as a basis for re-thinking and re-searching value, capital and accumulation. The second conference in this series will be held at York University in Toronto on October 20-21, 2011. Keynote speakers: Bob Jessop, Michael Perelman and Randall Wray. Extended deadline for abstract submission: July 31, 2011.
Open Access
Commodity Traders in a Storm: Financialization, Corporate Power and Ecological Crisis
(2021) Baines, Joseph; Hager, Sandy Brian
Commodity trading firms occupy a central position in global supply chains and their activities have been associated with financial instability, social upheaval and manifold forms of ecological devastation. This paper examines these companies in the context of debates regarding corporate financialization. We find that since the 2003–2011 commodity boom, trading firms have become less financialized in terms of the source of their profits as they have shifted away from financial activities. However, they have become more financialized in terms of the destination of profits, with dividend and share repurchase commitments reaching new heights after 2015. In view of this finding, we inquire into whether trading firms’ growing commitment to shareholder payouts will encourage them to continue to prioritize short-term returns, or whether instead these firms’ linkages to financial markets will lend clout to financial activists concerned by the long-term environmental and social consequences of their operations. Ultimately, we find several sources of commodity trader resilience which insulate them from shareholder resolutions and divestment campaigns aimed at curbing ecological destruction and human rights abuses in their supply chains. We accordingly suggest that pressures from activist investors must be complemented with more wide-ranging efforts to defend living systems across the planet.
Open Access
Corporate Ownership of the Public Debt: Mapping the New Aristocracy of Finance
(2015) Hager, Sandy Brian
In various writings Karl Marx made references to an ‘aristocracy of finance’ in Western Europe and the United States that dominated ownership of the public debt. Drawing on original research, this article offers the first comprehensive analysis of public debt ownership within the US corporate sector. The research shows that over the past three decades, and especially in the context of the current crisis, a new aristocracy of finance has emerged, as holdings of the public debt have become rapidly concentrated in favor of large corporations classified within Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE). Operationalizing Wolfgang Streeck’s concept of the ‘debt state’, the article goes on to demonstrate how concentration in ownership of the public debt reinforces patterns of social inequality and proceeds in tandem with a shift in government policy, one that prioritizes the interests of government bondholders over the general citizenry.
Open Access
Death Anxiety and the Political Economy of Power
(2020) Hager, Sandy Brian
Reflections on the work of Ernest Becker and Terror Management Theory and how they might relate to CasP analyses of concepts and modes of power.
Open Access
Financial Crisis, Inequality, and Capitalist Diversity: A Critique of the Capital as Power Model of the Stock Market
(2020) Baines, Joseph; Hager, Sandy Brian
The relationship between inequality and financial instability has become a thriving topic of research in heterodox political economy. This article offers the first critical engagement with one framework within this wider literature: the Capital as Power (CasP) model of the stock market developed by Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan. Specifically, we extend the CasP model to other advanced capitalist countries, including Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Japan. Our findings affirm the core prediction of the CasP model, showing that unequal power relations reliably predict future stock market performance. Yet when it comes to the CasP model’s explanation of why power relations predict stock market returns, our findings are more ambiguous. We find little empirical support for the claims that capitalist power is dialectically intertwined with systemic fear, and that systemic fear and capitalised power are mediated through strategic sabotage. The main lesson of our analysis is that any model of the stock market must be attentive to the geographical unevenness and continued national diversity in capitalist development.
Open Access
From Passive Owners to Planet Savers? Asset Managers, Carbon Majors and the Limits of Sustainable Finance
(2022) Baines, Joseph; Hager, Sandy Brian
This article examines the role of the Big Three asset management firms – BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street – in corporate environmental governance. Specifically, it charts the Big Three’s relationships with the publicly-owned Carbon Majors: a small group of fossil fuels, cement and mining companies responsible for the bulk of industrial greenhouse gas emissions. It finds that the Big Three much more often than not oppose rather than support shareholder resolutions aimed at improving environmental governance. Notably, this is even the case with the Big Three’s environmental, social and governance funds. A more fine-gained analysis shows that the combined voting decisions of the Big Three are more likely to lead to the failure than to the success of environmental resolutions and that, whether they succeed or fail, these resolutions tend to be narrow in scope and piecemeal in nature. Based on these findings, the article raises serious doubts about the Big Three’s credentials as environmental stewards.
Open Access
Investment Bank Power and Neoliberal Regulation: From the Volcker Shock to the Volcker Rule (Preprint)
(2012) Hager, Sandy Brian
The power of investment banks has played a pivotal role in the monopoly capital school’s analyses of US capitalist development. However this paper suggests that monopoly capital’s explanation of the changing nature of this power is severely limited. These limitations can be traced to the school’s logically circular and empirically inoperable theory of capital accumulation. The paper goes on to offer an alternative theoretical-empirical account of the power of investment banks since the early 1980s. Based on the notion of capital as power, the research suggests, contrary to the monopoly capital account, that investment banks have experienced a rapid resurgence in their power over this period. This resurgence must be understood with reference to the unique ways that investment banks have maneuvered within neoliberal regulation.
Open Access
Jurisdictional Tax Rates. How the Corporate Tax System Fuels Concentration and Inequality
(2019) Hager, Sandy Brian; Baines, Joseph
Corporate concentration in the United States has been on the rise in recent years, sparking a heated debate about its causes, consequences, and potential remedies. In this study, we examine a facet of public policy that has been largely neglected in current debates about concentration: corporate tax policy. As part of our analysis we develop the first empirical mapping of the effective tax rates (ETRs) of nonfinancial corporations disaggregated by size and broken down by jurisdiction. Our findings reveal a striking and persistent tax advantage for big business in recent decades. Since the mid-1980s, large corporations have faced lower worldwide ETRs relative to their smaller counterparts. The regressive worldwide ETR is driven by persistent regressivity in the domestic ETR and a marked drop in the progressivity of the foreign ETR over the past decade. We go on to show how persistent regressivity in the worldwide tax structure is bound up with the increasing relative power of large corporations within the corporate universe, as well as a shift in firm-level power relations. As large corporations become less disposed to investments that may indirectly benefit ordinary workers, they become more disposed to shareholder value enhancement that directly benefits the asset-rich. What this means is that the corporate tax structure is connected not only to rising corporate concentration, but also to widening household inequality.
Open Access
Public Debt as Corporate Power: Mapping the New Aristocracy of Finance
(2015) Hager, Sandy Brian
In various writings Karl Marx made references to an ‘aristocracy of finance’ in Western Europe and the United States that dominated ownership of the public debt. Drawing on original research, this paper offers the first comprehensive analysis of the pattern of public debt ownership within the US corporate sector. The research shows that over the past three decades, and especially in the context of the current crisis, a new ‘aristocracy of finance’ has emerged, as corporate holdings of the public debt have become rapidly concentrated in favor of large corporations classified within Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE). Drawing on Wolfgang Streeck’s concept of the ‘debt state’, the paper goes on to demonstrate how concentration in ownership of the public debt reinforces patterns of social inequality and proceeds in tandem with a shift in government policy, one that prioritizes the interests of government bondholders over the general citizenry.
Open Access
Public Debt, Inequality and Power. The Making of a Modern Debt State
(2016) Hager, Sandy Brian
[This book is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution + Noncommercial + NoDerivatives 3.0 license. Copyright is retained by the author(s)] FROM THE BACK COVER: Who are the dominant owners of US public debt? Is it widely held, or concentrated in the hands of a few? Does ownership of public debt give these bondholders power over our government? What do we make of the fact that foreign-owned debt has ballooned to nearly 50 percent today? Until now, we have not had any satisfactory answers to these questions. Public Debt, Inequality, and Power is the first comprehensive historical analysis of public debt ownership in the United States. It reveals that ownership of federal bonds has been increasingly concentrated in the hands of the 1 percent over the past three decades. Based on extensive and original research, Public Debt, Inequality, and Power will shock and enlighten. “These days, the topic of America’s debt stirs heated political debate. But one of the most important facts in this discussion has hitherto been obscured: who actually owns that debt inside America? Hager has done some fascinating and pathbreaking research to answer that question and concluded that the ownership pattern is surprisingly concentrated—and unequal—and that this may have implications for how the entire debt debate develops in the coming years. This is an illuminating work that deserves wide attention.” (GILLIAN TETT, Financial Times) “The relationship between the ownership structure of government debt and economic inequality—between public finance and the class structure of modern capitalism—is one of several central concerns of political economy that has been almost completely neglected in recent decades. Sandy Brian Hager’s book returns to the subject with theoretical and empirical bravado.” (WOLFGANG STREECK, Director Emeritus, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies) “Money is power, and US Treasury debt is the world’s single largest financial instrument. Hager’s insightful book fills an enormous hole in our knowledge of who owns this debt and how the power flowing from that increasingly concentrated ownership affects US and global politics.” (HERMAN M. SCHWARTZ, author of Subprime Nation: American Power, Global Capital, and the Housing Bubble) *** SANDY BRIAN HAGER is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. He has published in various journals, including New Political Economy and Socio-Economic Review.
Open Access
Radio Interview with Sandy Brian Hager on America's Real 'Debt Dilemma'
(2013) Arnesen, Arnie; Hager, Sandy Brian
Who owns the U.S. government debt and why does it matter? Sandy Brian Hager talks about the concentration of debt ownership, regressive transfer payments, and the class logic behind the ‘fix-the-debt’ campaign. Original research that bites. Duration: 26 minutes.
Open Access
Rethinking US Debt -- An Interview with Sandy Brian Hager
(2014) Hager, Sandy Brian; Sandronsky, Seth
U.S. debt is center stage of federal, state and local politics. For a deeper grasp of the nation’s indebtedness, and why that matters we turn to Sandy Brian Hager, a Fellow of International Political Economy in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He received his Ph.D. in 2013 from the Department of Political Science at York University in Toronto. His research examines the political economy of public debt, corporate taxation and financial regulation.
Open Access
"The Capitalist Mode of Power: Past, Present, Future": Conference Programme and Videos
(2011) Baines, Joseph; Hager, Sandy Brian; Ostoji?, Mladen
This is the second in a conference series organized by the Forum on Capital as Power. The present meetings explore the capitalist mode of power. There are 26 presentations, including keynote addresses and guest presentations by Bob Jessop, Randall Wray, Michael Perelman and Jonathan Nitzan. Attendance is free and all are welcome. DATE/TIME/PLACE: October 20-21, 2011
Open Access
The Capitalist Mode of Power: Second Speaker Series
(2015) Bichler, Shimshon; Cochrane, D. T.; Fix, Blair; Hager, Sandy Brian; Nitzan, Jonathan
Existing theories of capitalism, mainstream as well as heterodox, view capitalism as a mode of production and consumption. This speaker series interrogates capitalism as a mode of power. The five presentations deal with the past, present and future of the CasP project (Bichler & Nitzan), the historical connection between economic growth and the formation of social hierarchy (Fix), the role of blockbuster cinema in reducing Hollywood's risk (McMahon), the external-internal power dynamics of the U.S. public debt (Hager), and General Electric’s staying power and what can be learned from it for the study of capital accumulation (Cochrane). The speaker series is organized by the Forum on Capital as Power and sponsored by the York Department of Political Science and Graduate Program in SPT. LOCATION: Verney Room, 674 South Ross, Keele Campus (open to all, with refreshments) DATES: October 20, 27; November 3, 10, 17, 2015 TIME: 3:00-5:00 PM
Open Access
The Great Debt Divergence and its Implications for the Covid-19 Crisis: Mapping Corporate Leverage as Power
(2021) Baines, Joseph; Hager, Sandy Brian
The COVID-19 pandemic has ampliﬁed longstanding concerns about mounting levels of corporate debt in the United States. This article places the current conjuncture in its historical context, analysing corporate indebtedness against the backdrop of increasing corporate concentration. Theorising leverage as a form of power, we ﬁnd that the leverage of large non-ﬁnancial ﬁrms increased in recent decades, while their debt servicing burdens decreased. At the same time, smaller ﬁrms experienced sharp deleveraging alongside increasing debt servicing costs. Crucially, smaller corporations also registered severe losses over this period, while large corporations remained proﬁtable, and in fact doubled their net proﬁt margins from the early-1990s to the present. Taken together, the results from our mapping exercise uncover a series of dramatic changes in the ﬁnancial fortunes of large versus smaller ﬁrms in recent decades, a phenomenon we refer to as the great debt divergence. We explain this divergence with reference to the dynamics of power in the era of ‘shareholder capitalism’, and we argue that the US political economy in the post-COVID 19 world is likely to resemble the pre-COVID 19 one, only with more market turmoil, more concentration, more inequality, and even less investment.
Open Access
The Political Economy of the Corporation: Sahil Jai Duta Interviews Sandy Brian Hager
(2020) Hager, Sandy Brian; Dutta, Sahil Jai
PERC’s Sahil Jai Dutta is joined by Dr Sandy Brian Hager (City, University of London) to discuss the political economy of the corporation. He is the author of the book Public Debt, Inequality, and Power: The Making of a Modern Debt State (2016) published by University of California Press. The conversation spans across the topics of ownership and the politics of public debt, the power of large banks in the US, and his most recent work exploring what drives long-term shifts in the stock markets in the ‘advanced’ economies.

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