The previous chapter's discussion of the financialized character of contemporary precariousness and the processes of social liquidation and securitization may be illuminated and deepened by an examination of a social institution that, in the United States at least, has become synonymous with economic self-management, austerity economics and the relentless cultural power of financialized capitalism. Walmart, the world's largest employer and retailer (with over 2.2 million workers and global sales of $473.1 billion US – Annual Report 2014), in many ways defines the everyday life of American capitalism. Homogeneous and ubiquitous, its supercenters have come to dominate the landscape of many small and medium-sized American towns and cities and to preoccupy work, consumption and public space for hundreds of millions of people in the United States and beyond (the firm boasts no less than 6,100 retail units operating across 26 countries – Annual Report 2014). This influence, combined with the way Walmart, as a corporate entity, constantly revolutionizes itself to navigate (and, indeed, help shape) the rapidly changing global economy, makes it a particularly telling site to study the cultural politics of the dawning age of austerity.

Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, loc. 246