ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. Banks like to invest in culture. Banks also like to sponsor culture. ING bank is 'the most important sponsor of the Rijksmuseum' in Amsterdam. A popular explanation for the emergence of the crisis was 'greed' incentivized by the 'bonus culture' in the financial sector; and the popular epithet 'bankster' clearly connotes a culture and activities bordering on the criminal. An interest in the cultural aspects of economics, including industry and finance, was a characteristic of nineteenth-century political economy, of the old institutionalisms, and classical sociology. The most recent North Atlantic Financial Crisis (NAFC) also made the field of finance more accessible to these other disciplines by diminishing the power of the previous academic gatekeepers to control the allocation research money on financial matters -gatekeepers who had endorsed the efficient market hypothesis as the operating principle of modern finance.
