Capitalist economies are societies of production and distribution, in which financial systems determine the structure of resource creation. Capital accumulation is the structure through which wealth is distributed from this process through time. The paper examines the ways in which private financing defines, constructs and destabilizes this system. Chapter 1 describes the general process through which finance defines the composition of capital in the economy. Chapter 2 describes the recent history of financialization, in which the American economy has become increasingly subordinated to and destabilized by private finance through a complex web of institutional and operational aspects. The paper is a critical analysis of and commentary on capitalism, as mediated by finance