In many ways, this paradigm both reflects and goes well beyond the prognosis of Frankfurt Institute theorists like Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer (1997). Writing in the lead-up to and the wake of the Second World War, these authors noted the way rationality, calculation, science and reason had been perverted into the means to circumscribe the possibilities of human liberation, both in the capitalist West and the (supposedly) Communist East. Financialization forces this insight to a new level. The financial system represents a phenomenal crucible of human rationality, creativity, imagination and collaboration (see Chapter 5). As we have seen, some of the most promising minds of a generation are groomed at elite universities to take up roles in the financial architecture; not only MBAs but also PhDs in fluid dynamics, theoretical physics and perhaps even literary and cultural criticism, who can aid their parent firms in developing hyper-complex models and machines to track and execute high-frequency financial exchanges on the sublimely complicated market (see Derman 2011). But, as with the systems and institutions that developed nuclear weapons, or the Nazis’ “final solution,” these are derivatives of Enlightenment cognition and epistemology that have been turned against human interests and have been used to entrench and exacerbate systemic inequality and a deeply profound insecurity. While, individually, all these manoeuvres calculate risk with almost unimaginable precision and technological acumen, they cannot and do not fathom that the sum of manoeuvres creates not only an extremely volatile financial market, but a horrifically volatile global economy. Largely, this volatility is “externalized” onto those who have little influence over the market. For instance, as speculative capital rushes into and out of cereal futures, basic soybean or banana growers pay the price (Russi 2013), and, as finance wreaks havoc with global currencies and government bonds, it is whole populations who must contend with this volatility.