As Li Puma and Lee (2004, 161–189) illustrate, the signature cultural achievement of the derivative is to render the endemic economic violence of global financialization invisible by articulating volatility as the purely disinterested calculation of risk. So, while Walmart's derivatives may take the form of currency swaps (allowing them to mitigate the risk of, say, a sudden spike in the value of the Bangladeshi Taka, which would represent an unforeseen increase in the cost of materials produced there), these securities enfold and encrypt the endemic social, political and economic insecurities that are the result of financialization. This is emblematic of the Pyrrhic character of securitization: the hyper-individuated impulse to manage risk tragically produces only greater risk, although that risk may be transferred or, externalized onto others.

Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, loc. 277