Very important, and our reliance on unchecked finance is frankly too much. The hydrocephalus of finance makes for an unstable economic footing.
Finance accounts for eleven (11!) times the size of production as a contribution to GDP, according to a Presidential advisor I spoke with. That is a very unstable foundation of a country, considering that such an imbalance of finance vis-a-vis production makes finance nonrenewable and diminishes the renewable capacity of production at the same time. A double whammy of economic weakening, and then some. With finance betting mostly on itself these days.
The role of finance is very important because it acts as the arbitrage of all kinds of innovation. And when the thesis of finance determines what can be discovered (Einstein), the integrity of finance is key to the evolving quality and renewability of a society.
The main reason why finance currently does not optimally trace, explore and expand human capacity is that the systems of finance are in violation of the most rudimentary principles of freedom, and thus yield evolutionary incompatibility with the resources from which it aims to derive value.
We must reinvent our operating-systems of humanity, and implement more modern principles for finance to – for the first time – adhere to the principles of evolution as we recognize them today and serve rather than dictate the course of humanity.