ABSTRACT
Rogue investor Le Chiffre, the villain of the 2006 James Bond/007 fi lm Casino Royale, is just what his name implies: “the number”; a number; the next typical, abstract, anonymous fi gure (except for a disturbing habit of bleeding from his eyes) in a saga of fi nancial hell-raising. Premised as it is upon an ongoing battle between the nation-state and an investor run amok, the fi lm proves prescient of the global fi nancial crisis of 2008-a few weeks of massive bank, fi nancial institution, corporate, and even governmental failures and near-misses-during which anyone paying attention was likewise inundated with numbers. Take 30 September 2008 as a singular example. In the US, television networks intermittently fl ashed a dizzying series of fi gures, including the mounting 228-205 vote tally as the House of Representatives rejected the fi rst incarnation of a $700 billion fi nancial industry bailout package ostensibly intended to prevent the failure of the nation’s largest banks; the 778 point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average; the 8.8 per cent loss in the S&P index; the 9.1 per cent loss in the Nasdaq; and the sudden evaporation of $1.2 trillion from US stock markets (Figure 10.1).1 This on top of the federal government’s $85 billion loan to the American International Group (AIG) and the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, a fi nancial services fi rm with $639 billion in assets, less than two weeks earlier.
