Debt, Design and Disparity uncovers the hidden history of how Britain’s monetary order was built, and how that architecture still shapes who wins and who loses today. Moving beyond the familiar heroic tale of the Bank of England’s founding, the book follows the money, the people and the institutions that turned public debt and private credit into a machine for extracting wealth.

Instead of treating the Bank as a neutral guardian of stability, the book traces how a small circle of Whig financiers and their allies around Threadneedle Street engineered a system in which private actors gained control over money creation, while the state guaranteed their profits through taxation and public borrowing. Using a rigorous historical and socio-economic method in the spirit of Thomas Piketty, it challenges the standard narrative of “inclusive institutions” made famous by North, Weingast, Acemoglu and Robinson, and shows how Britain’s institutional framework entrenched monied power at the top of the economic hierarchy.

Across three tightly argued parts, Debt, Design and Disparity does three things: it reconstructs the Bank of England’s real origin story; it exposes how the new fiscal–financial regime channelled resources from taxpayers to shareholders; and it connects this history to modern patterns of wealth concentration and tax extraction. Drawing on 250 years of data, it demonstrates that Britain’s monetary institutions were not just background infrastructure, but active drivers of inequality and a rent-seeking order that endured well into the twentieth century.

Crucially, this is not just a book of critique. It offers a concrete alternative: a network of community banks with broad-based ownership, designed to share the benefits of credit creation rather than centralise them. Without relying on punitive redistribution or harsh austerity, it sets out how money and banking can be reorganised as a genuine public utility.

For economists, historians, policymakers, students of finance—and anyone who suspects that the rules of the game are rigged—this book provides both the missing history and a roadmap for change.