Activity

[...] Those aspiring to find work are now forced to borrow in order to cultivate knowledges, skills and competencies that save their future employers time and money: where an electrician, a fashion model or a security guard might have once been trained on the job at their employer’s expense, today …

[...] Just as the myths of the “golden age” occlude the very real precariousness that capitalism imposed upon everyone except a select few in the post-war period, so, too, do narratives that stress post-Bretton Woods finance as out of control and corrupted mask or sideline the tremendous corrosive …

Ho’s central argument is that the institutional culture of Wall Street, based on the uncut neoliberal values of performance, flexibility, individualism, competition and risk management, is then downloaded by finance onto other firms in manufacturing, retail and service (and, indeed, onto government…

The Street relies on a constant stream of young hopefuls who have “invested” hundreds of thousands of dollars in an elite education so as to be “job ready” when recruited (42–67). Typically in their early twenties when hired, new investment bankers and traders are ushered into a culture of hyper-in…

Financialization, then, drives and benefits from both precariousness and is presented as its purported antidote. On the one hand, hypercompetitive financial markets, hell-bent on ever-higher returns, have a tremendous disciplinary power [...] Meanwhile, market pressures to privatize, deregulate and…