The Lehman Minibonds crisis and financialisation of investor subjects in Singapore

Abstract

Using the case of the Lehman Minibonds crisis in Singapore, this paper aims to elucidate processes of financialisation and geographies of investor subjects by investigating the reshaping of retail banking consumers into investor subjects. Instead of painting all investor subjects with a broad brush as part of a generic financialisation process, the Minibonds crisis demonstrates how the consumption of financial products is geographically specific and moderated by local factors, such that financial subjects are incorporated unevenly into global financial markets. Greater geographical sensitivity is therefore needed to tease out how distinctive groupings or ecologies of financial knowledge, practices and subjectivities emerge in different places with uneven connectivity and unequal material outcomes. The paper concludes by discussing the incomplete and contingent nature of subject formation and implications for understanding neoliberal subjectivities.