In the same way as the financial sector sees the devolution of value into fragmentary metaphorics, so, too, does the social and cultural realm witness increased fragmentation, meaninglessness and chaos. Corporate strategy, disciplined by stock markets and financial institutions, is increasingly guided by frantic short-term efforts to secure higher financial returns, rather than by any long-term concept of fiscal sustainability, let alone any commitment to workers or consumers. Government policy, guided by the influence of bond markets, eschews any pretence to long-term planning and seeks largely to manage potential risks to the future profitability of transnational capital. Even individuals, driven increasingly by the dictates of debt or lonely financial acumen in a “liquid” world without guarantees, have difficulty envisioning the future as anything more than the endless continuation of the present (see Žižek 2010).

Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, loc. 138