Lena Rethel is Lecturer in Global Politics at the University of Southampton. She previously taught International Relations, International Political Economy and East Asian Politics at the universities of Warwick, Birmingham and Oxford Brookes. Her research focuses on financial system change in Asia, the emergence and challenges of Islamic finance and the relationship of finance, debt and development. Her articles are published in journals such as the Review of International Political Economy, New Political Economy, Globalizations and Journal of Business Ethics. Lena has co-edited two collections on the political economy of the subprime crisis that have appeared in New Political Economy and the British Journal of Politics and International Relations. Timothy J. Sinclair is Associate Professor of International Political Economy at the University of Warwick. In 2001/2002 he was a visiting scholar at Harvard University. His research is concerned with the politics of global finance and theories of global governance. The paperback edition of his book, The New Masters of Capital: American Bond Rating Agencies and the Politics of Creditworthiness, was published by Cornell University Press in 2008. He has edited Approaches to World Order, the collected works of Robert W. Cox (Cambridge University Press, 1996); Approaches to Global Governance Theory, co-edited with Martin Hewson (State University of New York Press, 1999); Structure and Agency in International Capital Mobility, co-edited with Kenneth P. Thomas (Palgrave 2001); and edited Global Governance: Critical Concepts in Political Science (Routledge 2003).

1. Introduction: Banks in Crisis Time and Again 2. The Nature of Banking: A Confidence Game 3. Disintermedition Drives Financial Innovation 4. Self-Regulation Drives Risk Taking 5. Problems with Reform Proposals 6. Conclusion: What is to be Done about Banks?