ABSTRACT
The years between 1850 and 1929 saw fundamental changes in the organization of both the financial system and popular culture. Over that period financial institutions moved to the center of the leading capitalist economies with minimal regulation of their activities, but far-reaching impacts on the system's stability as the promised arc of upward economic and social progress was punctuated by periodic crises. The rise of financial speculation was a central theme in some of the most successful novels of the second half of the nineteenth century devoted to interrogating contemporary life. The rise of cinema coincided with a further consolidation of financial economic power. In 1910 the Austrian economist, Rudolf Hilferding published Finance Capital, updating Marx and arguing that capitalism was now effectively controlled by banks. From the mid-1970s onwards, the leading capitalist economies confronted a structural crisis in profitability.
