Arrested Pulse

When former Citigroup global strategist Ajay Kapur discovered that an internal report he helped to write in 2005 called "Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances" was featured in Michael Moore's recent film Capitalism: A Love Story, he went immediately on the defense. "There was no nefarious or subversive intent behind our research on plutonomy," he told the Financial Times about the document he co-authored with former Citibank analysts Niall Macleod and Narendra Singh. And then the man who coined the word "plutonomy" added:


Oh yeah?

Kapur positions his team as scientists or technicians conducting "research" on a subject within a neutral ("clinical") framework. It's equivalent to saying: We just put the facts out there and let them speak for themselves. But a close rhetorical look at key passages from the report explode his claims to neutrality.

Dramatic "Facts" for a Dramatic Take of "the World"

After asserting that "[t]he World is dividing into two blocs: the Plutonomy and the rest," the authors go to some length to argue that the threats of "equity risk premium embedded in 'global imbalances' are unwarranted." The statistical components of their analysis--the "clinical" part--are used, however, to service vaunted ideological claims:


So let's unpack this chunk of rhetoric, shall we? First of all, at the semantic level, one wonders just how many "worlds" we are dealing with here. There's the weird designation of the "Anglo-Saxon world"--where I guess everyone is seen as, well, Anglo-Saxons. And then there's the more general world of the "world's intelligentsia"--I guess this is a non-geographical space, a kind of "world of the mind" location. And finally there's the "earth" itself, spinning precariously on its axis. Mix in the "World [that is] dividing into two blocks - Plutonomy and the rest" and we have four worlds to juggle around in our heads! This lack of semantic precision is clearly far from being "clinical."

Second, there is clearly an attitude here--one that is expressed through language that ennobles the "entrepreneur-plutocrats," the uberwealthy elite whose "muscular arms," like Atlas, hold up the earth and with whom the audiencethe report plays to--mostly male investors--would take pleasure in identifying with. This attitude--along with the thinly veiled reference to ultra-capitalist Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged--appeals only to those who would, indeed, be receptive to a theory that balks at the "threatening" consequences stemming from global imbalances. Even the effete among them would be aroused by the equation of power with muscular masculinity.

And, third, there is a smug disengagement with the ethical dimensions of the term "global imbalances" that I find alarming. What the authors say, in their tongue-in-cheek clinical way, is that it's OK to ignore those who thoughtfully consider consequences, the "intelligentsia," by simply accepting as unalterable fact their thesis that the world is divided between haves and have-nots. So, don't sweat the pangs of conscience, gentlemen. Sink your money in corporations which produce the "toys" (yes, they use that word) of luxury: yachts and rare jewelry and the like. Don't throw your money at the rest of the world. Invest in yourselves.

Beware of claims of "neutrality"

The notion that analytic discourse is somehow "neutral"--devoid of cultural assumptions or personal bias--needs to be interrogated by everyone who encounters it. Just basic rhetorical analysis can reveal how empirically generated data are rarely objective: they're always situated within cultural contexts and mostly persuasive in nature. What matters, in other words, is how data is represented, which often requires looking at the language it's embedded in.

The former Citigroup analysts who coined the term "plutonomy" did so in an attempt to justify--and probably promote--investing in corporations that produce upscale items for those who live in the lap of luxury. Their audience were wealthy, predominantly male, probably mostly Anglo-Saxon investors who most likely already occupy that realm. They did their jobs and did them well. But let's fess up to some real facts here--the main one being that their report was far less "clinical" and, in fact, a lot more nefarious than claimed.