Just Money, September 30, 2021, A Symposium On Destin Jenkins’s The Bonds Of Inequality: Debt And The Making Of The American City

Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC)

Bonds of Inequality: Debt and the Making of the American City details the rise and fall of the municipal bond market as an economic engine for municipalities.  Destin Jenkins, a Professor of History at Stanford, focuses on the development of San Francisco and its use of the municipal bond market, weaving that local story together with national repercussions.  This first book by Jenkins convincingly argues how debt, though little understood, is consequential in shaping policy and the very cities we live in. It explains how the interests and worldviews of a financial elite manage to reproduce inequality in the name of infrastructure and economic development.