In an age of financialization, when all of this commodification and agency occurs under the aegis of a system dominated by financial flows and speculations, the everyday production of value becomes more important than ever. In a world where our lives are increasingly determined by immaterial statistics in remote bank databases, where money – which has always been a mutually agreed upon illusion – has ceased to be tangible and entered the digital stratosphere, where the contradictions of the global system are readily apparent (countries like Greece, Iceland or Ireland can go from financial utopia to financial ruin in the blink of an eye with absolutely no “real” change to their underlying economy), the global economy is predicated on the shared belief of value as never before.

Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, loc. 400