“What do Senator Elizabeth Warren, Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, and Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, have in common? For one, all three will appear in Washington this week, at a conference about finance and its relationship to the rest of society. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the need to tame the banking sector and prevent a repeat of the crisis became a huge political issue, giving rise to the Dodd–Frank legislation of 2010 and the Occupy Wall Street movement. Other concerns have come to the fore of American politics, but many questions about the financial industry, including what exactly it contributes to the rest of the economy and how it should be regulated, still haven’t been resolved. Meanwhile, concerns about excesses in the financial sector have merged with broader worries about rising inequality and economic stagnation.”

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Read the full New Yorker piece by John Cassidy here.