Financialization has made American businesses less resilient, less innovative and less competitive. It has been a major cause of slow wage growth and rising inequality. It has fueled the loss of manufacturing jobs across the heartland. It has corrupted sectors in which the profit motive was never meant to reign supreme — veterinary practices, funeral parlors, campgrounds, residential treatment services, youth sports, hospitals and nursing homes, even suppliers for volunteer fire departments — consolidating and managing them with ruthless efficiency, squeezing their vulnerable customers and then pointing to the higher cash flow as “value creation.”

 The Finance Industry is a Grift. 

Let's Start Treating it that Way.

By Oren Cass

Mr. Cass, a contributing Opinion writer, is the chief economist at American Compass, a conservative economic think tank, and writes the newsletter Understanding America.