When most people consider the effects of government policy on economic inequality they think of taxes, welfare programmes, charter schools or student loans. But, as we show in our new study of the history of politics in shaping banking policies around the world – Fragile by design: the political origins of banking crises and scarce credit (Princeton 2014) – inequality can be affected by the rules of the game under which banks operate. Those rules define, among other things, who gets to be a