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 otherwise dismantle the social welfare of the state have created conditions in which social life is rendered more precarious than ever, with access to old-age security, healthcare, education, disability benefits and other forms of insurance increasingly left up to individuals and their lonely financial accumen. In the atmosphere of precariousness, the market then offers itself as the solution. Respond to precarious employment by “investing in yourself”: [...] Financialization both drives precariousness and offers itself as its solution.

Indeed, the dominant cultural politics and economics of financialization rely on and promote the idea of leveraging precariousness. Individuals are beholden to comprehend and maximize returns on the risks they bear, transforming the vicissitudes of neoliberal biopolitics into opportunities for individual competition and uplift. In the dawning age of austerity, precariousness is not only the norm; it is a gift, an opportunity for the financialized subject. With great risk comes the possibility of great reward, and those who fail to leverage their personal “risk portfolio” into economic wealth (and an escape from existential and economic precariousness) have only themselves to blame [...]