Uncertain Subjects of Anglo-American Financialization

By Paul A. Langley. 2007

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Appearing for the first time four months after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the Web site of McWhortle Enterprises' publicized the launch of the Bio-Hazard Alert Detector. The Detector, which "is small enough to slip into a man's jacket pocket, a woman's purse or child's backpack," was the first product offered by the company to "the general public." Based upon McWortle's experience of providing "defense systems" to the "far-flung executives" of "Fortune 500 companies," the Detector works by sensing "microscopic levels of hazardous bioorganisms and deadly virus organisms." Owners of a Detector can have considerable "peace of mind," safe in the knowledge that it "emits an audible beep and flashes when in the presence of all known biohazards." The huge potential market for the Detector and McWhortle's previous success-as evidenced on its Web site by customer testimonials and an audio interview with its president Thomas J. McWhortle III-led the company to announce an initial public offering (IPO) in a press release of January 25, 2002.2 While McWhortle's stated intention was to file its Registration Statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) five days later in order to enact the IPO, the press release also stressed that "The SEC has advised us that they have 'pre-approved' our IPO because the nation needs a product like this on the market as quickly as possible to protect Americans from terrorism." Those who responded to the press release by trying to invest in McWhortle through the "invest now" section of its Web site were told that the IPO was presubscribed but that stage 2 bidding was still available. However, those who passed through the portal and attempted to participate in stage 2 bidding

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Finance

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Citations in the corpus

Financialization and the Consumer Credit Boom (2008, unknown): “…that outlines the assembly of ‘investor subjects’ with reference to the Foucauldian-inspired category of ‘governmentality’ (Aitken 2007; Knights 1997; Langley 2006b, 2007), I suggest that the making of financial subjects and financial self-disciplines more broadly plays on freedom and security…”
Financializing space, spacing financialization (2011, background): “A key part of this process, as Langley (2007) illustrates through the concept of govermentality, is the encouragement on the part of the state and other agencies for individuals to adopt the position of a responsible neo-liberal financial subject, which requires them to ‘calculate, measure, and…”
The Great Moderation, the Great Excess and the global housing crisis (2015, background): “Not only do lenders and investors prioritise exchange value, but even homeowners increasingly come to think of their home in terms of investment rather than consumption (Langley, 2007; Watson, 2009).”
Financialisation, Financial Literacy and Asset-Based Welfare (2009, background): “A challenge for analysis, then, is to identify the specific contemporary arrangement of economic and cultural technologies that act on what Paul Langley (2007) calls the ‘investor-subject’.”
House Price Keynesianism and the Contradictions of the Modern Investor Subject (2010, background): “The always provisional nature of the investor subject (Langley, 2007) means that this conception of the self is usually unstable and never materialises in practical terms fully branding the government’s savings strategy a complete success until such time as larger numbers on savings pilot schemes…”