ABSTRACT

Synthetic finance revolutionizes materialism such that we can now create wealth in the process of universally distributing it. While financial innovation in global capitalism provided the conditions for the 2008 financial crisis, it has also engineered a set of financial technologies with universal distributive potential. This book explains this possibility and demonstrates how it can be achieved through a rigorous ontological exposition of the radical, nomadic, distributive power of synthetic finance. It also illustrates that Gilles Deleuze is the heterodox political economist who best reveals its profound material capacities.

This book articulates an innovative method for the study of finance, fundamentally revaluates political economy as a discipline and practice, and inaugurates a research project from which derivative methodologies and approaches to critical finance can evolve. Of Synthetic Finance actualizes a new kind of heterodox political economy called speculative materialism, and advocates a radical project of speculative materialist financial engineering. Both of these are predicated on the deployment of the latent, nomadic, monstrous capacities of synthetic finance to create and universally distribute risk and cash flow.

This book is a must read for anyone interested in critical finance, the financial crisis and the future of political economy.

chapter |5 pages

Introduction

chapter 2|31 pages

The materialism of synthetic finance

A case study on credit derivatives in seven notes

chapter 3|36 pages

Wagers of the synthetic

Difference & Repetition as heterodox political economy