Course syllabus: 16 chapters

The course runs from a clerk's first entry to a crisis you work through as a board member. Every chapter opens with a primer — an explanation in plain words — and only then moves on to practice.

• Chapter 1 of 16 · The ClerkThe basics of double entry. To understand where money in an economy comes from at all, and why a bank account is not a safe holding your banknotes.
• Chapter 2 of 16 · Credit OfficerLending to business. To work out what exactly a bank charges a business for, and why it likes some deals and not others.
• Chapter 3 of 16 · The Developer-FinancierConstruction, escrow, presales. To understand whose money buildings are actually built with, and why the buyer of an apartment that is still a hole in the ground…
• Chapter 4 of 16 · The Bank TreasurerLiquidity, repo, interest rate risk. To understand why banks die not from losses but from a shortage of money on one particular Tuesday.
• Chapter 5 of 16 · The Investment Banker: Capital MarketsIPOs, bonds, convertibles. To understand how a company borrows not from a bank but from thousands of strangers at once, and who earns on that.
• Chapter 6 of 16 · M&A and LBOTakeovers on other people's money. To understand how a company is bought with almost none of your own money, and who ends up paying for a purchase like that.
• Chapter 7 of 16 · The StructurerSPVs, securitization, dark arts. To understand how property and debts disappear from the accounts while remaining somebody's very real problem.
• Chapter 8 of 16 · The Central BankerThe banks' money: reserves, QE, rescues. To understand who controls the amount of money in a country and how, and why the printing press in the everyday sense is a myth.
• Chapter 9 of 16 · Master of Derivatives and ShadowsSwaps, eurodollars, stablecoins. To understand how you can own the risk without owning the thing, and why whole pieces of the financial world live out of the…
• Chapter 10 of 16 · The VirtuosoFinal multi-step deals. To gather everything you have learned into one picture and learn to take any complicated deal apart into simple moves.
• Chapter 11 of 16 · The Entrepreneur's OfficeForks in the road: the choice of money and its price. To move to the other side of the table and learn to choose money for your own business, rather than simply agreeing to what is…
• Chapter 12 of 16 · The RegulatorThe rules of the game: capital, liquidity, conduct. To understand why banking rules exist and how to see from them, in advance, that a bank is about to fall.
• Chapter 13 of 16 · The World of CurrenciesThe Fed, correspondent accounts, borders. To understand that money does not cross borders, and why whether your company can receive a payment from another country depends…
• Chapter 14 of 16 · Payment RailsCards, clearing, wallets, stablecoins. To understand where the percentage on every card sale of yours goes, and why in some countries it has almost disappeared.
• Chapter 15 of 16 · Managers of TrillionsThe BlackRock world: index, ETF, Aladdin. To understand how a manager of other people's money differs from a bank, and why the size of the fee decides more than the…
• Chapter 16 of 16 · Private CapitalThe Blackstone world: LP/GP, carry, BREIT, private credit. To understand how the funds that buy up whole companies are built, and why a promise to invest money is not yet money.