Jakub P Hlávka reviews Ivan Ascher’s Portfolio Society in Science & Public Policy.Click here to learn more about the book. Click here to read the full article. An excerpt appears below.

“As a college freshman, I recall asking an economics professor how any single equilibrium price for complex assets in financial markets was reached between buyers and sellers—to which I received a generic ‘demand meets supply’ answer and was left to my devices to figure out how this was executed in practice. Although I have since visited a trading desk and saw the closing of such transactions first-hand (and learned about the models underlying them), I now wish Ivan Ascher’s account of the intricacies of contemporary financial markets—and their implications for the common man—had been available to me then. In this short and highly readable publication, the author covers original ground, namely his critique of the rise of financial markets that have largely securitized key relationships between capital holders…”