Since the 1970s, global finance has taken on a systemic character, made starkly visible after Lehman Brothers’ collapse in 2008. Fifteen years later, how can we understand the ongoing reliance of society and economy on interconnected financial markets? This chapter examines the Anglo-American context with a global perspective, proposing that infrastructure is key to understanding why capitalist states and societies remain unable or unwilling to reduce the financial sector’s influence. By focusing on financial derivatives, particularly their liquid, marketized forms, it shows how these instruments forge new spatial and temporal connections. Despite political resistance, maintaining this liquidity has become a technical matter, obscuring the political-economic contradictions tied to socioeconomic inequality. Capitalist states now view derivative and broader financial markets as systems to be safeguarded from breakdowns or illiquidity, requiring immediate repair during crises. Extending the concept of (il)liquidity and drawing on infrastructural inversion, the chapter argues that financial markets exist in a perpetual state of breakdown, necessitating constant maintenance and repair.