Summary

After a surge of progressive efforts on behalf of minorities, women, and the environment during the 1960s, the “masters of mankind” launched an offensive to redesign the American economy via two avenues: financialization and offshoring (33). The growth of the financial sector included a sharp increase in currency speculation and other money manipulation tactics, all which happened alongside an overwhelming tendency for corporations to move production to cheaper, less developed countries. Combined, these two initiatives converged to what Chomsky amounts to a coordinated effort to redesign the economy.

Prior to this restructuring, the financial sector was miniscule compared to the production or manufacturing sector. Financial institutions were primarily tasked with distributing “unused assets like bank savings to productive activity” (33). The financial sector grew significantly after the regulatory apparatus of the New Deal was dismantled in the 1970s, and the activity generated by financial...