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Date and Location

October 31, 2024
3:00 PM - 4:30 PM ET
Malkin Penthouse
Stone Inequality Book Talk: Mehrsa Baradaran

In this Stone Inequality Book Talk, Professor Mehrsa Baradaran will present her new book, The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America.


About the book: The business of America is business, to paraphrase a famous line from a speech by Calvin Coolidge. But the business of America is also the law. The encoding of neoliberalism into the framework of the American judicial system that began in earnest during the civil rights era has made it virtually impossible to untangle the “invisible hand” of the free market from the invisible work of lawyers, judges, lobbyists, and regulators who shape the rules of trade, investment, and even value. From legal rulings at the highest level to hardly remarked upon agency rule-making, the law is the invisible force guiding the free market. It is also the law, or rather the law’s corruption through complexity, that has become the source of economic inequality in America, which has led to widespread distrust from the right and the left. In her new book, The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America, University of California, Irvine legal scholar and banking reform activist Mehrsa Baradaran (The Color of Money and How The Other Half Banks) contends that the law has been the ideological battleground enabling the rise of neoliberalism, which began in response to global and domestic movements in the 1960s. Contrary to standard histories of neoliberalism as an economic theory that took hold of global politics in the 1980s, Baradaran contends that neoliberalism began in response to the global justice movements of the 1960s as the new face of empire. Despite movements like Occupy Wall Street, the progressive policy proposals of politicians like Bernie Sanders, and the populist rhetoric of former president Donald Trump, neoliberalism is not “over.” Confronting the dogma of neoliberalism and the corruption it has enabled across the judicial system is especially urgent now as demagogues have begun to fill the void in public understanding with conspiracy theories and racist scapegoating. What Baradaran calls “the looting of American society” was not a criminal event—indeed, it was aided and abetted by the judicial system, a coup carried out under the banner of “freedom.” Only meaningful legal reforms and an enlivening of democratic principles can address the “quiet coup” that has shaped our banking system—and our economy— since the 1960s. Tracing the largely unknown story of the transformation of the law from the late 1960s to the present, The Quiet Coup is a powerful and timely book that offers a new framework for understanding the epochal changes in American life over the last five decades as well as our current predicament.


Mehrsa Baradaran is a Professor of Law at UC Irvine School of Law specializing in financial inclusion and banking regulation. She is the author of several books, including The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America, The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap, and How the Other Half Banks: Exclusion, Exploitation and the Threat to Democracy. Baradaran has testified before the US Congress and Senate as an expert in financial policy and has consulted with state and national lawmakers on drafting legislation related to financial inclusion. Baradaran served on two Presidential Transition Teams overseeing the US Treasury, Federal Reserve and multiple banking agencies. She was nominated as Comptroller for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) in 2020.

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Stone Program in Wealth Distribution, Inequality, and Social Policy

Co-Organizer