"This book offers a theoretically sophisticated, empirically rich explanation of how financialization was politically created in the United States beginning in the 1980s, and how it has increased inequality. Prechel takes us inside corporations to see how financial capitalists leveraged control over organizations to enhance their power or government and thereby enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else including other fractions of capital."—Richard Lachmann, University at Albany, State University of New York

"A must-read for anyone wishing to understand the foundations of contemporary capitalism. It draws on quantitative analysis, in-depth case studies, and trenchant historical analysis to uncover the class conflicts and structural dynamics that have given rise to the modern financial system, which to so many people's dismay has proven prone to periodic crisis."—Donald Palmer, University of California, Davis

"This important study looks at changes in corporate–state relations and changes inside the corporation to find the origins of corporate malfeasance. As corporations layered up more complex ownership structures, opportunities opened for behavior that precipitated the Great Financial Crisis. Prechel grounds his analysis in larger changes in U.S. society that have contributed to disastrous social inequality."—Terrence McDonough, National University of Ireland Galway

Harland Prechel is Professor of Sociology and Liberal Arts Cornerstone Fellow and Energy Institute Fellow at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Big Business and the State (2000).