As the reach of financial markets extends across the U.S. and the globe, interest rates, debt, and debt crises become the dominant forces driving the rise of economic inequality almost everywhere. The "super-bubble" that investor George Soros identified in rich countries for the two decades after 1980 became a super-crisis for the majority of the population, not just in the U.S. but the entire world. Economist James K. Galbraith discusses his book, *Inequality and Instability: A Study of the World Economy Just Before the Great Crisis*. In it he argues that finance is the driveshaft that links inequality to economic instability. The book challenges the viewpoint that technology is behind rising inequality. It also challenges those who have placed the blame narrowly on trade and outsourcing. *Inequality and Instability* presents evidence that the rise of inequality mirrors the stock market in the U.S. and the rise of finance and of free-market policies elsewhere.
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