The Fall and Rise of American Finance traces the collapse and reconstitution of American financial power from the disintegration of robber baron J. P. Morgan’s vast empire to the rise of finance behemoth Black Rock. Contrary to what is taken for common sense by figures from Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders, Maher and Aquanno insist that financialization did not imply the hollowing out of the ‘real’ economy or the retreat of the state. Rather, it served to intensify competitive discipline to maximize efficiency, profits, and the exploitation of labor-with the support of an increasingly authoritarian state.
A propos de l’auteur
Stephen Maher is Assistant Professor of Economics at SUNY Cortland, and Associate Editor of the Socialist Register. He is also the author of Corporate Capitalism and the Integral State: General Electric and a Century of American Power (Palgrave, 2022).