Monetized time-space: derivatives - money's 'new imaginary'?

This paper examines some of the ways in which the everyday is becoming conn ected into the world of finance, a process facilitated through so-called de rivatives. The increasing use of derivatives is traced to the collapse of t he Bretton Woods agreement and the ways in which innovative developments in financial engineering were used to overcome the uncertainties of interest rate, currency and price risks that grew apace from the early 1970s. We arg ue that these risks are not 'more of the same'. They are qualitatively diff erent and run deeper through the highly integrated financial markets of tod ay. And, as later parts of the paper argue taking their cue from the works of Paul Virilio and Georg Simmel, notably the latter's Philosophy of Money, the manner in which these risks interact and the speed of their interactio n suggest the emergence of new forms of money, a ne ir monetization of time -space. The paper then moves on to consider how the calculative practices t hat lie at the heart of derivatives involve a process of socialization of t he understanding of the risks that new money forms are made to negotiate su ccessfully. The 'idea of money' - of what it is now supposed to be capable of doing with and across time-space - thus stems from a 'new money imaginar y'. The paper concludes by reemphasizing the reasons why, when understood t hrough a reading of Virilio and Simmel, derivatives should be viewed as rep resenting new forms of money.