One issue in the debate over the origins and dynamics of the North Atlantic Financial Crisis and its contagion effects in a vulnerable, unbalanced global economy is the recently expanded role of finance in the form of financialization. While this is sometimes discussed in terms of a conflict between the ‘real economy’ and the financial economy (e.g., Main Street versus Wall Street, Industry versus the City), this opposition is misleading if it implies that the real economy in capitalist formations somehow operates without monetary and financial intermediation. This is, of course, impossible (Keynes 1936). More