Where does money come from? Who controls it? Who issues it? What is it for? We don't ask these questions, we just assume it's a given. In fact, money doesn't come from nowhere, it has to be created and circulated and managed - and that is quintessentially a public function. Because we don't ask fundamental questions about money, then we don't understand its political capacity, and political opportunity.

Social scientist Mary Mellor re-examines economics from the very beginning - the creation of money itself - to explain why the privatization of money works against the public interest, how the ironic mechanisms of debt serve to punish the public with austerity while bailing out finance capital, and what changes in a society that reclaims the use of money for the good of all its citizens.

Mary is author of the book Debt or Democracy: Public Money for Sustainability and Social Justice from Pluto Press.