After the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the bipolar world order, victorious Western capitalism, under the leadership of the only world power, the United States, reigned supreme in global politics, and even more so in the global economy. Nothing and no one, it seemed, could stem the global triumph of the market, with its transcendence of all previous limits on wealth – that is, until September 15, 2008, the fateful date when Lehman Brothers went bust and the meltdown of the global financial system began.