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And thanks for listening. Welcome to the HBR Ideacast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Sarah Green. I'm

here today with Gotham Makunda, Harvard Business School Professor and author of the

new article The Price of Wall Street's Power.

Gosem, thanks so much for coming in today.

Oh, it's a pleasure to be here, Sarah. Thank you.

Now you have described the financialization of the U.S. economy as the American economy having an enlarged heart.

Explain what you mean by that metaphor.

It's common to criticize the financial sector in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008 and what we

always say when we talk about the sectors it's it's important to remember that capital

flow is the blood supply of an economy. You cannot have a functioning modern

economy without banks. You cannot have a functioning economy without

capital flowing through the system. And if the financial system is the circulatory system of the economy,

then the large banks that we think of when we think of the sort of centers of financial

power are the heart of the system.

The problem is safe if they are the heart of the system is that hearts are good up to a certain point

but the fact that something is the heart does not mean that has an infinite

claim on how big it can be does not mean that has an infinite claim on how big it can be

does not mean that it can get eternally larger and eternally more powerful and we

...