As the chapters in this book explain, private equity firms also hasten the “financialization” of the American economy through the increased power of banks and other financial institutions over companies that make and sell useful products and tangible goods. Today, the finance industry gets a quarter of all corporate profits, up from a tenth in the “greed is good” 1980s. At the same time, it employs just 5 percent of the country’s workforce and largely fails to deliver a useful product for many Americans: a quarter of households, for instance, don’t have access to a bank account. By controlling the operation of companies in the rest of the economy, private equity hastens this trend toward financial control.