Risk has become the lens through which the market is understood. Despite

the long history of risk and its related discourses in gambling, religion,

mathematics, and probability, the prominence of risk in the contemporary

monetary order is the product of a series of strategic responses to unantici-

pated events rather than a continuous process of scientific or mathematical

progress. These unintended events, since the collapse of the post-war monetary

order, have had the effect of clearing and reorganizing financial space. The

reintegration of financial markets in a period of intense political and economic turmoil created economically unmanageable volatility. The concept

of ‘‘risk management’’ first appeared in this monetary order as a market-

oriented solution to the problem of volatility in time-lagged and conditional

transnational financial arrangements (e.g., contracts for imported goods

denominated in foreign currencies). The management of risk focused upon

the micro-foundations of the emerging monetary order, the balance sheet, as

the site where risk emerged within the firm. The techniques developed to

transfer and exploit the risk on and off the balance sheet have rewritten the map of the monetary order as market participants learned to exploit these

techniques to avoid regulation and engage in speculation. Like the manip-

ulation of a complex genetic code, the manipulation of the risks surround-

ing the firm’s balance sheet has resulted in the creation and growth of a new

monetary order. This chapter provides a rough map of this monetary order

that is unfolding itself across a multidimensional space.