Drawing on insights from Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx, the authors interpret the relationship between capital accumulation and profitability trends through the conceptual lens of classical political economy. The book provides extensive empirical evidence of declining rates of US non-financial corporate accumulations from the mid-1960s and profitability trends in that sector falling from post-war highs. In contrast to this, it is shown that there was a vigorous rise of profitability in the financial sector from a 1982 trough to the early part of the twenty-first century, which led to the bloating of that sector. The authors conclude that the long-term falling accumulation trend in the non-financial corporate sector, highlighted by the bankruptcy of major automobile corporations, stands out as the underlying force that transformed the financial crisis into a fully-fledged Great Recession. This book will be of interest to students and researchers in the areas of economics, political economy, business and finance.