The Bonds of Inequality

Indebtedness, like inequality, has become a ubiquitous condition in the United States. Yet few have probed American cities’ dependence on municipal debt or how the terms of municipal finance structure racial privileges, entrench spatial neglect, elide democratic input, and distribute wealth and power.

In this passionate and deeply researched book, Destin Jenkins shows in vivid detail how, beyond the borrowing decisions of American cities and beneath their quotidian infrastructure, there lurks a world of politics and finance that is rarely seen, let alone understood. Focusing on San Francisco, The Bonds of Inequality offers a singular view of the postwar city, one where the dynamics that drove its creation encompassed not only local politicians but also banks, credit rating firms, insurance companies, and the national municipal bond market. Moving between the local and the national, The Bonds of Inequality uncovers how racial inequalities in San Francisco were intrinsically tied to municipal finance arrangements and how these arrangements were central in determining the distribution of resources in the city. By homing in on financing and its imperatives, Jenkins boldly rewrites the history of modern American cities, revealing the hidden strings that bind debt and power, race and inequity, democracy and capitalism.

Book Symposium on The Bonds of Inequality

During the summer and fall of 2021, Just Money and the Law and Political Economy Blog hosted a book symposium on The Bonds of Inequality. The conversation featured ten contributions from scholars in the fields of history, law, and sociology, and activists engaged in fights for racial justice. The prompt, contributions, as well as the author’s response, can be found here.

Reviews

“Many histories describe capitalism as a destructive phenomenon; the rare few take us into the guts of the system. Jenkins exposes the arteries and muscle, the blood ways that deliver money and credit to create racial capitalism. In a brilliant and tragic account, he reveals how bond finance—and the people who make it happen—extract wealth and reconfigure governance, breaking urban communities on the very promise meant to rescue them: liberal investment in the public welfare.” —Christine Desan, author of Making Money: Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism

“If you want a deeper understanding of the way inequality works in practice, read Destin Jenkins. Tracing the relationship between bondholders, banks, and municipal debt from the New Deal to the 1980s, The Bonds of Inequality provides an essential new layer to the history of racial capitalism. In a moment when unprecedented numbers of Americans are in debt, and cities across the country continue to file for bankruptcy, this brilliant book could not be more timely.” —Elizabeth Hinton, author of From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America

“In The Bonds of Inequality Destin Jenkins reveals how the savage inequities of race and class that characterize US cities are enshrined through capitalism’s most banal, routine, and quotidian transactions. Through a forensic inquest into the archives of the twentieth-century bond market, Jenkins unravels the intricate and entangled social, cultural, and political-economic worlds of urban money and credit, demonstrating in astonishing detail how financiers and technocrats came to triumph over citizens, cities bent to the rule of lenders, and the life of debt took precedence over the good of democratic society. Written with eloquence, clarity, and quiet, smoldering fury, The Bonds of Inequality is a critical and timely intervention into the political economy of cities and the history of capitalism. Its lessons are as important for the Bay Area as for the rest of the indebted world.” —Peter James Hudson, author of Bankers and Empire: How Wall Street Colonized the Caribbean

“With The Bonds of Inequality, Jenkins delivers a sophisticated and important book. In uncovering previously hidden relationships between democracy and power, he powerfully explains the impact of debt service on municipal budgets, and follows this impact over time. His original view of urban governance combines a historian’s perspective with a refreshed moral compass. The impact of this original book, as a unique contribution to scholarship, is enormous.” —Alison Isenberg, author of Designing San Francisco: Art, Land and Urban Renewal in the City by the Bay

“In this path-breaking book, Jenkins makes two crucial interventions. He gives municipal finance a much-needed history and—even more important—he opens up a new framework for understanding persistent racial inequality in American cities. Through rigorous research and sophisticated analysis, The Bonds of Inequality literally follows the money, tracing the connections between race, urban economic development, and capitalism.” —Thomas J. Sugrue, author of Not Even Past: Barack Obama and the Burden of Race