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Up until around 2008 and the subsequent revelation of systematic manipulation, the integrity and 'facticity' of the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) were rarely questioned. Academics treated LIBOR and the Eurodollar market as if they were synonyms. Central bankers conducted monetary policy as if the LIBOR was an objective reflection of the money market rate. Corporates and households entered into LIBOR-indexed financial contacts as if a money market was the underlying benchmark. This paper investigates how and why LIBOR managed to maintain its status as a term for the competitive money market colloquially, professionally and in the economic literature for so long. By adopting a theoretical framework drawing insights from both political economy and sociology, and applying it to the LIBOR-indexed derivatives market, it is shown how the benchmark's appearance betrays its fundamental nature. This process benefits certain actors within the market: the banks. Importantly, however, it also reveals how LIBOR became, and remained, such an important benchmark, how it came to be perceived as an 'objective fact', and why the regulation that came into place was insufficient to sustain its future use.

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Between 2010 and 2015 Greek banks received capital injections as part of an EU-led rescue package that left the Greek state with large losses on their investments and a debt to repay; in the most acute moments of the crisis the European central bank twice forced the Bank of Greece to assume sole responsibility for any losses on lending to Greek banks, and; in 2015 Greek banks were subject to EU-mandated controls that restricted the transformation of Greek bank deposits into Euros in other forms. Why did European banking infrastructure leave the Greek state facing losses and liabilities alone, while still full members of the EU and Euro Area (EA)? We find that European banking infrastructure is combined-but-not-unified, and that integration requires both. Drawing on Marxist political economy we examine the financial mechanisms in detail and find a scalar split in state provision of banking infrastructure in the EU/EA. At the supranational level, the removal of barriers to cross-border banking and a common rule book. Meanwhile, promises of monetary support, such as deposit guarantees and lending of last resort have largely remained the responsibility of nation states. The combined-but-not-unified structure ensured that when crisis struck, Greece was isolated, yet still fully part of the EU/EA.

Derivatives and Development provides a robust critique of the case made by international development agencies for the use of derivatives to alleviate the poverty of small farmers in the global South. It dismantles the theoretical arguments in favour of using derivatives in development and theorizes on the continued advocacy of such policies by international development agencies despite their failure in practice.Analytically, the book approaches the subject from the perspective of 'poor farmers' in the global South, using a global commodity chain analysis and, in the core chapters, presenting a study of global coffee markets. Chapter two lays out the theoretical arguments that are presented for derivatives and development; chapter three then shows comprehensively that this theory fails in practice. In chapter four, the global coffee commodity chain and the coffee derivative commodity chain are presented and used to explain farmers' disadvantaged position in coffee markets and in coffee derivatives markets. This disadvantaged position in the underlying commodity chain is critical to the analysis of farmers' derivative use. The book does not completely reject the possible usefulness of derivatives; rather, it shows how farmers are excluded from their benefits by their position in the underlying commodity chain. Furthermore, because stronger players in the commodity chain can benefit from derivatives and farmers cannot, derivatives use by the strongest may even worsen the position of excluded farmers.Breger Bush's book focuses on small farmers as an analytical category, making certain assumptions about the way in which such a uniform category of producers is impacted by, and incorporated into (or not), global commodity exchanges. Breger Bush does, when discussing the global coffee commodity chain, make useful distinctions between producers and other actors in the chain, demonstrating how smaller producers are largely excluded from hedging, while larger estates, international traders and roasters all effectively use the instruments to their advantage.Rather than focusing on the issue of the categorization of small, poor farmers or questions around the notion of development, in this review I approach the book from the other end of the title: derivatives. In doing so I hope to highlight how the strength of the book -tackling head on the arguments of neo-classical theory and supporters of derivatives in development -also restricts analysis. The problem arises when considering what derivatives are for. The neo-classical case, that derivatives are instruments for risk sharing and hedging, is shown over the course of the book to be wrong. Derivatives are shown to be instruments used to trade easily, and in large quantities, a handful of short-term, highly standardized instruments -terms that bear little resemblance to the small, long-term, occasionally used, bespoke contracts that farmers would require. Despite this, derivatives as a hedging tool remain the organizing idea for analysis of the book. In order to show what der...