We are told that the new finance of crypto and central-bank digital currency is not beholden to old rules. Financial history tells us something different: We have been here before. Our contemporary financial revolution is just a new mix of some of the oldest ideas of shared ledgers, tradable liabilities, and assets in the form of a promise to pay. Financial history can help decision-makers understand where new products borrow from long-standing institutions – and spot old risks in new clothing.
SPEAKER BIOS
Sean Vanatta *18 is a Senior Lecturer in Financial History and Policy at the University of Glasgow and a senior fellow at the Wharton Initiative on Financial Policy and Regulation at the University of Pennsylvania. Previously, Sean taught in the Gallatin School for Individualized Study at New York University and in Princeton University’s Writing Program. He held the National Endowment for the Humanities Hagley Postdoctoral Fellowship in Business, Culture, and Society and the John E. Rovensky Fellowship in U.S. Business and Economic History. Sean holds a Ph.D. in history from Princeton University, and an M.A. and B.A. from the University of Georgia.
Brendan Greeley *27 is a Ph.D. candidate in Princeton’s Department of History, specializing in the history of finance. His first book, The Almighty Dollar: 500 Years of the World’s Most Powerful Money, will be published in the spring of 2026 with Penguin Random House. He worked for 20 years as a journalist, most recently as the US economics editor at the Financial Times, where he continues to write a regular column. Before that, he was a staff writer for Bloomberg Businessweek and The Economist, and an anchor and correspondent for Bloomberg TV. He has written for the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, and the Wall Street Journal Europe, and received a New York Press Club Award for special event reporting in 2012. He holds a B.A. in German from Tulane University.
Harold James is the Claude and Lore Kelly Professor in European Studies, Professor of History and International Affairs, and the Director of the Program in Contemporary European Politics and Society at Princeton University. He studies economic and financial history and modern European history. He is the official historian of the International Monetary Fund. Before joining Princeton in 1986, he was a Fellow of Peterhouse College at Cambridge University. James is a recipient of the 2004 Helmut Schmidt Prize for Economic History and the 2005 Ludwig Erhard Prize for writing about economics. He writes a monthly column for Project Syndicate. His most recent book, Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalization, offers a new history of financial crises, showing how some led to greater globalization while others kept nations apart. His previous books include Family Capitalism, Harvard University Press, 2006; The Creation and Destruction of Value: The Globalization Cycle, Harvard University Press, 2009; Making the European Monetary Union, Harvard University Press, 2012; The Euro and the Battle of Economic Ideas (with Markus K. Brunnermeier and Jean-Pierre Landau), Princeton University Press, 2016; Making A Modern Central Bank: The Bank of England 1979-2003, Cambridge University Press 2020; The War of Words: A Glossary of Globalization, Yale University Press 2021.
Tiger Gao ’21 is a technology investor at Apax Digital, which specializes in growth equity and buyout investments in high-growth enterprise software, internet, and technology-enabled services companies worldwide. Prior to joining Apax, he was an analyst at Centerview Partners. From 2018 to 2021, he co-founded and hosted Policy Punchline, a weekly updated, long-form, interview podcast with public intellectuals, policymakers, business executives, and entrepreneurs across all fields. He holds a B.A. in economics from Princeton University and is a former chair of the JRCPPF Undergraduate Associates.
This event is co-sponsored by the Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy & Finance, the Center of Collaborative History and the Economic History Workshop.