The Finance Industry Is a Grift. Let’s Start Treating It That Way.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/opinion/capitalism-industry-financialization.html
Oren Cass:
Financialization has made American businesses less resilient, less innovative and less competitive. It has been a major cause of slow wage growth and rising inequality. It has fueled the loss of manufacturing jobs across the heartland. It has corrupted sectors in which the profit motive was never meant to reign supreme — veterinary practices, funeral parlors, campgrounds, residential treatment services, youth sports, hospitals and nursing homes, even suppliers for volunteer fire departments — consolidating and managing them with ruthless efficiency, squeezing their vulnerable customers and then pointing to the higher cash flow as “value creation.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/opinion/capitalism-industry-financialization.html
Oren Cass:
Financialization has made American businesses less resilient, less innovative and less competitive. It has been a major cause of slow wage growth and rising inequality. It has fueled the loss of manufacturing jobs across the heartland. It has corrupted sectors in which the profit motive was never meant to reign supreme — veterinary practices, funeral parlors, campgrounds, residential treatment services, youth sports, hospitals and nursing homes, even suppliers for volunteer fire departments — consolidating and managing them with ruthless efficiency, squeezing their vulnerable customers and then pointing to the higher cash flow as “value creation.”
Oren Cass Uses Good Economics in Attacking Finance in NYT
https://cepr.net/publications/oren-cass-uses-good-economics-in-attacking-finance-in-nyt/
Arcand, J.L., Berkes, E. & Panizza, U. Too Much Finance?. J Econ Growth 20, 105–148 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10887-015-9115-2
Abstract
This paper examines whether there is a threshold above which financial depth no longer has a positive effect on economic growth. We use different empirical approaches to show that financial depth starts having a negative effect on output growth when credit to the private sector reaches 100 % of GDP. Our results are consistent with the “vanishing effect” of financial depth and that they are not driven by endogeneity, output volatility, banking crises, low institutional quality, or by differences in bank regulation and supervision.
https://cepr.net/publications/oren-cass-uses-good-economics-in-attacking-finance-in-nyt/
Abstract
This paper examines whether there is a threshold above which financial depth no longer has a positive effect on economic growth. We use different empirical approaches to show that financial depth starts having a negative effect on output growth when credit to the private sector reaches 100 % of GDP. Our results are consistent with the “vanishing effect” of financial depth and that they are not driven by endogeneity, output volatility, banking crises, low institutional quality, or by differences in bank regulation and supervision.
Related:
Financialization