In today’s political climate, many people point to the ways that the tech sector has contributed to the undermining of our democracy, but UCSC professor and director of the Community Studies program Mike McCarthy argues that the financial sector has had an even greater impace. In this episode of The Cutting Edge, Dr. McCarthy discusses his 2025 book The Master’s Tools: How FInance Wrecked Democracy (And a Radical Plan to Rebuild It), which shines a bright light on the ways that finance guides and constrains our politics, but most importantly, pointing to the ways we can transform financial institutions to better serve people and our economy. McCarthy provides powerful insights on why and how we can build more economic democracy in this country, to help counter the growing corporate oligarchy.
