Financialization of the Economy, Business, and Household Inequality in the United States

2The financialization of American household inequality

DOI: 10.4324/9781003223320-3

Introduction

Having controlled for the macroeconomic consequences of financialization in the preceding chapter, this chapter returns to the central goal of this study: to combine pluralist and critical political economy, the qualitative methods of historical–institutionalism, and the basic principles of financial balance-sheets and portfolio strategy to better explain how financialization has affected each American social sector. The preceding volume focused on the financialization of US banks, the centralization and financialization of monetary authority, and the new ideologies, and realities, of shadow banking, off-balance-sheet operations, and nonbank financial ...