[...] Just as the myths of the “golden age” occlude the very real precariousness that capitalism imposed upon everyone except a select few in the post-war period, so, too, do narratives that stress post-Bretton Woods finance as out of control and corrupted mask or sideline the tremendous corrosive power it has always wielded (Lapavitsas 2013; Luxemburg 2003). As Ian Baucom (2005) illustrates in his fascinating study of finance in the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans, financialization has long been a means to strip individuals and groups of their humanity. Quantitative and speculative techniques have consistently been employed to facilitate amoral and short-sighted processes, and to spread the liability, risk and culpability of such acts across a broad cross section of society (see LiPuma and Lee 2004). The Bretton Woods era saw the mobilization of finance towards neocolonialism, and the vast expansion of consumerism and industrial growth that is today manifesting as a massive ecological crisis (see Foster, Clark and York 2010; Ndikumana and Boyce 2011). While there is much that is new and dangerous about today’s financial economy (notably its global, computerized character, its incredible speed and chaos, and its tremendous power over all aspects of the economy), we should not make the mistake of either (a) imagining that what came immediately before was inherently “better,” or (b) that the problem is simply “finance” or “financialization.” The problem is, and has always been, capitalism, of which finance is one key articulation and mediation. Certainly there have been and yet could be less violent forms of capitalism, at least for certain populations. But this does not justify limiting our theoretical, political or ethical horizons to the reregulation of the financial sector.