This book explores the role of expectations within the modern capitalist system. Through looking at how they are formed and develop, the impact of events that lead to a collapse in expectations, such as a major financial crisis, is examined to highlight the precarious and unstable nature of the...

Introduction -- The financialization of the American economy -- The financialization of American household inequality -- The financialization of American non-financial business / Olivier Butzbach -- Conclusion

Slavery and the Civil War -- Reconstruction -- The Gilded Age and Jim Crow laws -- The Great Migration, Depression and world wars -- Postwar prosperity and the civil rights movement -- A new Gilded Age and mass incarceration -- Racism rises and America declines.