Abstract
Abstract This paper reconstructs the ontology of finance as it is presented in Kenneth Arrow’s general equilibrium model of contingent commodities. The fundamental notion of modern finance, ‘Arrow securities’ (paying one monetary unit contingent upon a certain future event and nothing otherwise) is considered an elementary Luhmannian code of the economic. The performative, self-implementing tendencies in general equilibrium analysis are reinterpreted in view of the joint risk design as conceived by Dirk Baecker. Creating new (markets for) risks to control the future can be, on the one hand, traced back/justified with reference to Arrow’s world of contingent commodities and, on the other, rationalized as a way of adjusting the economic system and moving reality closer to its theoretical portrayal. I also associate the creation of the new ‘risk structures’ with the new overarching temporality inviting us to tame uncertainty and govern the future.
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