The second industrial revolution, based upon electricity, chemicals, and the internal combustion engine, and characterized by capital intensity and large initial investments, was made possible by the emergence of corporate securities markets. Markets allowed banks to transform long-term loans to industry into securities, recoup their liquidity, and lend anew. The development of securities markets in general was made possible by the agglomeration of savings in the core. Secondary securities markets needed a lot of liquid assets to function well. Yet, most securities markets did not find the cash they needed to grow and, as a result, stagnated. Securities markets were starved of cash in countries where local credit sectors carved up a sizable portion of the deposit market. Stock markets in the second half of the nineteenth century constituted, along with large commercial banks, a new “corporate finance,” geared to the financial needs of the new industrial sectors. Land and other traditional sectors, in contrast, had no use for “corporate finance,” but, instead, were banking with the non-profit sector (savings banks, credit cooperatives, and mortgage banks). The two financial sectors were in competition for resources, mainly deposits. The competition was adjudicated politically, through regulation. Since the size of the local non-profit sector was a negative function of the degree of centralization of the state, the development of corporate securities markets conversely was a positive function of state centralization.