On ‘the limits to financialization’

This response elaborates the role mediation plays in making ‘financialization’ visible and argues that it is crucial to analyze the institutional and mathematical infrastructure of finance in any treatment of financialization. Together, these two points form a paradox: in a period in which media representations make it seem critically important to understand the world of finance, the technical mathematics used by financial theorists and practitioners makes doing so almost impossible for most people. Understanding the history of the mathematical models professionals use to make financial decisions must be central to an analysis of financialization.