Arbitraging Japan

For many financial market professionals worldwide, the era of high finance is over. The many decades in which bankers and financiers were once the primary movers and shakers of both economy and society has come to an abrupt halt. What has this shift meant for the future of capitalism? What has it meant for the future of the financial industry? What about the lives and careers of financial operators who were once driven by utopian visions of economic, social and personal transformation inspired by complex techniques and intricate theories of the market? And what does it mean for critics of capitalism who have long predicted the end of financial institutions? In Arbitraging Japan, Hirokazu Miyazaki answers these questions through a close examination of the careers and intellectual trajectories of a group of pioneering derivative traders in Japan during the 1990's and 2000's. For these traders, techniques and theories of finance, particularly the complex practice of arbitrage, have served as source of personal faith, and a belief that they somehow might change the world for the better. Their dreams have come to embody the energy, speed and utopianism -- as well as the vulnerabilities and cruelties -- of our new financial world.