The ISDA Protocol: Difference between revisions

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{{a|opcoboone|}}<div class="indent">
<div class="indent">{{a|opcoboone|}}main character arcs
== Background ==
The lender of last resort (LOL)
When they signed the armistice the remaining banking superpowers resolved that never again would they engage in such futile destructive behaviour.  
 
Boone’s parents, subject matter experts, were killed in Boone’s infancy when an outsourcing delivery van by a vega-hopped rent-jacker collided with their
 
lawyer with recession-proof business and the cosmological constant
 
Consulting the mad scientist Dr hans zarkov style havid Dilbert, to work out what is going on
 
Oh my god there are dirty derivatives bombs embedded in every retail portfolio. If they can somehow be discharged together in a coordinated way
 
It's not possible
 
Unthinkable
 
Yes but not impossible
 
There have been small experiments... What I'd these are just the start?
 
J.T. Palmer backstory - partner at same firm. At end, he is summoned back to his alma mater only to be not ''celebrated'', but ''whacked'', Goodfellow style and replaced as GC be a young partner... Roly Punchface
 
Punchface history — advised on many failed deals each of which generated more work in workouts, insolvencies. Apparent defiance of gravity turns out not to be gravity defying at all, but embracing. What is rent extraction to you is revenue generation for me: just giving fast, effective, timely and final proactive does not maximise returns. I need to sow uncertainty, doubt and create reliance. My product is dependence through the appearance of safety. All the better if that safety is in fact illusory.
 
Enforcement agencies are stretched to breaking point covering a raft of intergovernmental accords. It is tense. Tempers simmer. between them, the Exclusion Zone. Where neither regulatory perimeter stretches.
 
Offworld Bad-Bank Clean-Up Units send in remote-control SPVs to manage the tail risk. They’re dangerous machines: they can only operate in this toxic environment using off-balance-sheet technology that, after the great crash, is banned in the major residential markets. They have multi-core legal personalities – every now and then, one flames out. Its core shuts down and they carry on. They re-spawn.
 
Some go rogue. There is an ever-present danger of them escaping back into the major retail worlds.
 
Cayman is the off-world where forces deploy wealth creation bots – tax sheltering – film partnerships – basic entertainment model that exploits tax breaks for film subsidies – but not allowed on the onworld
 
Above the legal settlement the Cardozo Dam, and above it Lake Indeterminacy. Its massive assumption turbines  powering the legal community, who live under the spell of collective nightmares (“ultramares”) of a colossal, potentially unending avalanche from above.  


By BCB accord, use of [[FWMD]]s was forever banned, the superpowers agreeing, by conference at Bretton Woods, to create a multi-partite peacekeeping force with wide-ranging powers of inspection. Peacetime use of controlled derivative devices to power and heat for the world’s financial markets was, of course, permitted, but a pan-global regulatory force could inspect at any time.
Where is marked on a white stick in the lake Abe right line above which indeterminacy has become so high that the floodgates automatically open. The community has worked for many years erecting qualification sluices, entry barriers and comprehension baffles to ensure that the [[bright line]] is never crossed.


Meanwhile, the BCBH established five-sigma exclusion zones around the still-smouldering ruins left over from the great financial war, while massive [[IOSCO]] transport helicopters flew continuous missions over the “[[Lehman]] sarcophagus,” dumping gigatons of flame-retardant liquidity upon it and similar sites for years after the armistice.
==The fables of the [[First Men]]==
In primary school, Nurse Travers reads the orphans stories from myths and legends of the citadel, including the story of [[Reg Margin]] and the tricksy jester [[Vlad Paripasu]].


Gradually, the financial world returned to stability and progress. The were, of course, flare-ups: no one expected a hiccup during routine testing at the massive BBA-LIBOR facilities in E14 in 2010 to cause a reactor meltdown, but the chain-reaction was swift and before it could be brought under control the gigantic IRS generators that powered much of London were knocked out for months. By the time the situation finally normalised, there had been significant casualties: not least when a transporter carrying upper management team ran out of plausibility and crash-landed on the very building housing the BOE’s crisis headquarters. The crash site was swiftly isolated and neutralised with [[credibility derivatives]].
----''Interlude - the Rake’s Progress of Private Melvin, part 1: The crooked E. The  Early interaction with Graeber, whom Melvin bullies.''


== The [[Baker Street shakedown]] ==
===End point===
Graeber is sitting in a squad-car waiting for his partner to return with coffee. An APB comes across the wireless about a cache of FWMDs in a grey car in the Baker Street area. At that moment a grey GMRA sedan runs a red light and Graeber knows he’s got his man. He pulls it over, demands to see in the trunk, and finds ... ''nothing''.  He shakes down the driver and his VIP passenger, with a 92 LFC in the solar plexus and demands to strip search the whole car. He rousts the trunk, throwing stuff into the street, then opens the back door and — there is this androgynous, youthful, dolphin-like being — Graeber is smitten, and is stammering an apology when his partner, Officer Melvin R Melvin, arrives with the coffees and donuts, horrified and recognises that the VIP is none other than Julian Wickliffe, chairman of the WHAMDAQ and politically connected guy. He quickly lets the car go, apologising profusely. Wickliffe is complementary about him as he goes, to his great relief.
The crew feverishly race to stop the final cataclysm as the concatenated chain of FWMDs threaten to engulf the financial world once again. They avert disaster before realising that the whole financial world as, inadvertently, passed over the entropic event horizon of utter tedium and mathematically now has no choice but to roam forever towards the great, misty, tan entropic nothingness of the hereafter. The iron mountain.  


If course the dolphin is/is concealing the weapons cache
==The break-in==
Having determined that Wickliffe is behind the smuggling operation, in the knowledge that the deployment is going to be unleashed to destroy the Cardozo Dam Legal squad orchestrates breakin to Central intelligence on Wickliffe Hampton. There is a briefing scene at legal squad HQ with a a map and strategy 4 drop then the the night of the raid apparently goes off without a hitch, the squad encountering only outsourced defence systems. The further into the citadel they get the more it becomes apparent that everything has been outsourced and there is in fact no controlling brain, but Wickliffe Hampton is like a a zombie what controlled by automatic impulse from without.


They return to base, Melvin warning Graeber he had better prepare himself for a bollocking.
They trace all the way to the credit unit, only to realise it too is staffed by volunteers and children and dilettantes who are only worried about their revenue stream, most of which is coming from


== The desk job ==
== [[The exclusion zone]] ==
Meanwhile things slowly turned to normal for commando [[Opco Boone]] of the I.S.D.A.’s [[crack drafting squad]]. We know Opco saw action, and is scarred by it, but we don’t know the details. They will come back to Opco as the story unfolds. Though still shell-shocked, he has a desk job now, but bridles at the timidity of his role, and the uneasy peace of the post-crisis world.  He is checking off some uninteresting files when, across the squad room he hears his CO’s booming voice. GRAEBERRRRRR!
When they signed the armistice the remaining banking superpowers resolved that never again would they engage in such futile destructive behaviour.  


Opco is following a series of odd coincidences which are turning him to a view that mysterious forces are gathering in the shadows, and is privately collecting evidence to assemble a theory and back his theory up. His nemesis in this theory is his commanding officer, Sir Stuart Palmer Jenkins, who encourages him to embrace the technological devices and process that will replace seat-of-the-pants old style policing.
By BCB accord, use of [[FWMD]]s was forever banned, the superpowers agreeing, by conference at Bretton Woods, to create a multi-partite peacekeeping force with wide-ranging powers of inspection. Peacetime use of controlled derivative devices to power and heat for the world’s financial markets was, of course, permitted, but a pan-global regulatory force could inspect at any time.


Boone follows lead [NEEDS EVENT] that takes him undercover and into a “Vega Dens”, where supposedly legal synthetic alpha generators operate. underground clubs in London’s West End.  
Meanwhile, the BCBH established five-sigma exclusion zones around the still-smouldering ruins left over from the great financial war, while massive [[IOSCO]] transport helicopters flew continuous missions over the “[[Lehman]] sarcophagus,” dumping gigatons of flame-retardant liquidity upon it and similar sites for years after the armistice.


The Vega dealer, or “prime”, skims cash “commission” from clients but never partakes in its own product. “It’s just business.”
Gradually, the financial world returned to stability and progress. The were, of course, flare-ups: no one expected a hiccup during routine testing at the massive BBA-LIBOR facilities in E14 in 2010 to cause a reactor meltdown, but the chain-reaction was swift and before it could be brought under control the gigantic IRS generators that powered much of London were knocked out for months. By the time the situation finally normalised, there had been significant casualties: not least when a transporter carrying upper management team ran out of plausibility and crash-landed on the very building housing the BOE’s crisis headquarters. The crash site was swiftly isolated and neutralised with [[credibility derivatives]].
==[[The education of Private Melvin]]==
Melvin’s tragic character arc from not terribly good soldier to preying on innocent retail victims, and eventually the retail victims ganging up on him in his personal apotheosis. Increasingly sordid episodes where Melvin’s lack of moral fibre and corruption become increasingly evident as he spirals into depravity.  


Not wanting to blow his cover, Boone accepts the offer of an alpha tray. It is served by a beautiful, otherworldly child. The child seems curiously unengaged. Dissociated. Boone goes to ask the child for more information but as it does the alpha takes hold and Boone falls deep into the well.  
Starts with a routine patrol to clear out a bricks & mortar emplacement across the old information superhighway. Melvin reminisces about his brass-barrelled OSLAs and falls into a reverie about his old commander Bundie, warning the class of the likely slip in standards in future weaponry by the I.S.D.A. And he was dead right. Melvin snaps back to patrolling the greyfield strip mall, with E in his comlink. He takes on a videodrome. Expecting it to be dead and deserted, Melvin is surprised to see the radiation is unusually high. Melvin goes on closer and finds a hopped out long-head retail partisan. Melvin shorts him, killing the stock, and closes out his short with the partisan’s open position. He makes a small turn and gets a feel for blood.


As Boone sleeps, The Romanian enters his chamber and arranges compromising pictures with the youth, then says, all right, Signa, get this schmuck out of here.
Days later Enron blows.


Boone wakes up in a strange room and heads back to the office to find his the subject of a complaint from Julian Wickcliffe, the manager of the the Vega Den in question. Wickliffe alleges ISDA harassment.
Meanwhile E tries to act as whistle-blower and is pooh-poohed by higher-ups who are enjoying the easy revenue. Far from being suspended, Palmer reassigns Melvin and funds him.


Palmer-Jenkins, who is a drill-sergeant, police captain from central casting, dresses Boone down and assigns Kommandant Kurzweil of the Double-O unit to manage and supervise Eagle Squad. Anxious to avoid the kind of disruption or embarrassment that loose cannons might yield while the World Regulator Business Day Convention is in town, Palmer assigns Boone and  weirdo and conspiracy theorist Officer Graeber to netting detail and put on the Belgian beat. “See if you two can’t stay out of trouble rousting Belgian avocats for a week.
Melvin moves on - his next mission he stumbles into the GameStop arcade. Make it look that he was lured into a trap in.


As Palmer's bad luck would have it ''L’Hôtel des Grandes Moules Frites''  in Rue John F Kennedy in ''La Quartier Belgique'' happens to be hosting the Business Day Convention.


Boone and Graeber promenade about the ''Manneken Pis'', Graeber harping on about his absurd (but consistently prescient) conspiracy theories, based on what he saw in Baker Street.  
== The [[Baker Street shakedown]] ==
Graeber is sitting in a squad-car waiting for his partner to return with coffee. An APB comes across the wireless about a cache of FWMDs in a grey car in the Baker Street area. At that moment a grey GMRA sedan runs a red light and Graeber knows he’s got his man. He pulls it over, demands to see in the trunk, and finds ... ''nothing''.  He shakes down the driver and his VIP passenger, with a 92 LFC in the solar plexus and demands to strip search the whole car. He rousts the trunk, throwing stuff into the street, then opens the back door and — there is this androgynous, youthful, dolphin-like being — Graeber is smitten, and is stammering an apology when his partner, Officer Melvin R Melvin, arrives with the coffees and donuts, horrified and recognises that the VIP is none other than Julian Wickliffe, chairman of the WHAMDAQ and politically connected guy. He quickly lets the car go, apologising profusely. Wickliffe is complementary about him as he goes, to his great relief.


The pair shake down a Luxembourg netting counsel, who babbles insouciantly about aleatory contracts and is just about to launch into a lengthy description of what a company isn’t when,
If course the dolphin is/is concealing the weapons cache
they are distracted by the VIPs  and motorcades rolling up to the conference. Graeber spots the grey sedan and calls boone’s attention to it. Boone sees ...  ''the child from the alpha den’’. She is dressed immaculately and bejeweled and in the company of ... Wickliffe.


Boone follows the pair into the L’Hôtel, where there is a surreal sequence like a ghost train of different sessions, plenary sessions, break out sessions, tea breaks and so on.  
They return to base, Melvin warning Graeber he had better prepare himself for a bollocking.


Boone accosts the child but she — or he: it is oddly hard to tell — feigns ignorance. But I saw you at the alpha den.... Boone says “for a young person you find yourself in some grown up places. Do your parents know you’re here?”. She says she doesn’t ''have'' any parents. She looks nervous, shifty. Says she has to leave. She presses a card into Boone’s ==The Vega den==
==[[An encounter at the vega den]]==
Across the squad room, Boone hears the group commander’s booming voice.  
Across the squad room, Boone hears the group commander’s booming voice.  


Line 49: Line 79:


Opco leaves for an investigation.
Opco leaves for an investigation.
Boone follows lead [NEEDS EVENT] that takes him undercover and into a “Vega Dens”, where supposedly legal synthetic alpha generators operate. underground clubs in London’s West End.  
Boone follows lead [NEEDS EVENT] that takes him undercover and into a “Vega Dens”, where supposedly legal synthetic alpha generators operate. underground clubs in London’s West End.  


The Vega dealer, or “prime”, skims cash “commission” from clients but never partakes in its own product. “It’s just business.”
Opco tracks down old  fellow vet Felix, who is now doing super well as the owner of a chain of Vega Dens. A vega dealer or “prime”, skims cash “commission” from clients but never partakes in its own product. “It’s just business.”


Not wanting to blow his cover, Boone accepts the offer of an alpha tray. It is served by a beautiful, otherworldly child. The child seems curiously unengaged. Dissociated. Boone goes to ask the child for more information but as it does the alpha takes hold and Boone falls deep into the well.  
Unwisely, Boone accepts Felix’s offer of an alpha tray, assuring Boone that is is a legal, harmless high. It is served by a beautiful, otherworldly child. The child seems curiously unengaged. Dissociated. Boone goes to ask the child for more information but as it does the alpha takes hold and Boone falls deep into the well.  


As Boone sleeps, The Romanian enters his chamber and arranges compromising pictures with the youth, then says, allright, Signa, get this schmuck out of here.
As Boone sleeps, The Romanian enters his chamber and arranges compromising pictures with the youth, then says.


Boone wakes up in a strange room, realises he is late for an all hands meeting at the office and makes haste back to the office.
“All right, Signa, get this schmuck out of here.”


== The desk job ==
Improbably strong, the slight youth lifts boone over one shoulder and takes him out.


Meanwhile things slowly turned to normal for commando [[Opco Boone]] of the I.S.D.A.’s [[crack drafting squad]].  
Boone wakes up in a strange room, realises he is late for an all hands meeting back at the office and makes haste back.
 
== [[Netting detail]]==
===Reverie===
Meanwhile things slowly turned to normal for commando [[Opco Boone]] of the I.S.D.A.’s [[crack drafting squad]].  He can’t stop thinking about the kid with the vacant eyes.
 
Thoughts snap back to coalface. A colossal wall of tedious shit.


Though still shell-shocked, he has a desk job now as a once promising career ran stale and drifted into dead end — netting compliance — but he quietly bridles at the timidity of his role, the department, and the uneasy peace of the post-crisis world.  His hand still shakes and he has PTSD whenever anyone says “margin”.
Though still shell-shocked, he has a desk job now as a once promising career ran stale and drifted into dead end — netting compliance — but he quietly bridles at the timidity of his role, the department, and the uneasy peace of the post-crisis world.  His hand still shakes and he has PTSD whenever anyone says “margin”.
===New crew===
His CO asks for his report. He follows him into the office and lays it down: unkempt, stuffed with scraps of paper, scrawled notes, faxed sheets.
Opco is following a series of odd coincidences which are turning him to a view that mysterious forces are gathering in the shadows, and is privately collecting evidence to assemble a theory and back his theory up. The Vega Dens of Soho are building up odd concentrations of correlation. That is what you would expect, in Vega addicts, but Boone believes the dealers are getting correlated.
CO stops him, irritated and disinterested with his ludicrous theories, and urges Boone to get on with the netting analysis, which needs to be done by Friday, or there will be serious (internal, formalistic, consequences).


His coo asks for his report. He follows him into the office and lays it down: unkempt, stuffed with scraps of paper, scrawled notes, faxed sheets.  
Boone complains that there is so much to do, and it is all so boring, and CO says, the good news is you have a new team member to help you.  


Opco is following a series of odd coincidences which are turning him to a view that mysterious forces are gathering in the shadows, and is privately collecting evidence to assemble a theory and back his theory up. The Vega Dens of Soho are building up odd concentrations of correlation.
It is Graeber, who has been demoted out of Eagle Squad. He has been put out of harm’s way on the netting detail for the duration of the joint association working group business day convention that is being held in town.
That is what you would expect, in Vega addicts, but Boone believes the dealers are getting correlated.
They point to the committees, models, and risk monitoring devices His nemesis in this theory is his commanding officer, Sir Stuart Palmer Jenkins, who encourages the team to embrace the technological devices and process that will replace seat-of-the-pants old style policing. Chatbots, Google glass, distributed ledgers, even though he is not really sure what any of those things are. He has a gift for the acronym, and a well developed sense of bluff.
COO cautions him to stick to his remit. “Look after the pounds and the pennies take care of themselves.”
“But — ”
“I know, Opco, but that is not in within our mandate.”
“But — ”
“Opco.” A stridency, now, to her voice. Impatience. Dislike, even.
Opco gets up to go.
“Oh, one more thing. We have a new recruits into the department. I’d like you to be his buddy. Help him get acclimatised, oriented.
“since when did we have headcount?
“We don’t. It’s a secondment from the traffic unit.
“Who is it?”
The coo shuffled her papers awkwardly.
“Who?”
“It’s Graeber.”
Oh Jesus F. Christ! Why me?
“Get your account reconciliations in, Boone. We need them by Friday. You don’t want another disciplinary. Graeber can help you.
“Fat lot of good he’ll be.”
Boone meets with Graeber, and explains the role. Netting compliance. Suggests he start with something easy like Luxembourg.


Palmer-Jenkins, who is a drill-sergeant, police captain from central casting, dresses Boone down and assigns Kommandant Kurzweil of the Double-O unit to manage and supervise Eagle Squad. Anxious to avoid the kind of disruption or embarrassment that loose cannons might yield while the World Regulator Business Day Convention is in town, Palmer assigns Boone and weirdo and conspiracy theorist Officer Graeber to netting detail and put on the Belgian beat. “See if you two can’t stay out of trouble rousting Belgian avocats for a week.
Anxious to avoid further disruption or embarrassment from loose cannons while the Joint Association Working Group’s Business Day Convention is in town, and the precinct is overflowing with the luminaries of Military Financial Complex, Palmer assigns them Graeber to Boone’s to netting detail. “The guy’s a liability. See if you can’t keep him out of trouble for a week would you?”
===Learning the ropes===
Boone is unhappy but has no choice. He starts to train Graeber on netting and assigns him Luxembourg as his first jurisdiction. Very important to get clear, succinct summary.  


As Palmer's bad luck would have it ''L’Hôtel des Grandes Moules Frites''  in Rue John F Kennedy in ''La Quartier Belgique'' happens to be hosting the Business Day Convention.
==[[Netting epiphany postponed]]==
Graeber works at the Luxembourg opinion, until late in the night. He cannot make head or tail of it. The schedules, the assumptions, the reference to obscure provisions of Germanic law and the Napoleonic code. The defs, the anti defs, the assumptions and the qualifications.


Boone and Graeber promenade about the ''Manneken Pis'',  Graeber harping on about his absurd (but consistently prescient) conspiracy theories, based on what he saw in Baker Street.  
Dawn is coming up and, delirious, Graeber resolves to pay the Luxembourg lawyer a visit.


The pair shake down a Luxembourg netting counsel, who babbles insouciantly about aleatory contracts and is just about to launch into a lengthy description of what a company isn’t when,
Graeber has made a beeline for an avocat’s office in Av. John F Kennedy in the Belgian Quarter. As Palmer’s bad luck would have it, ''L’Hôtel des Grandes Moules Frites'', the venue for the Business Day Convention, also happens to be in the Belgian quarter, in avenue J F Kennedy.
they are distracted by the VIPs  and motorcades rolling up to the conference. Graeber spots the grey sedan and calls boone’s attention to it. Boone sees ...  ''the child from the alpha den’’. She is dressed immaculately and bejeweled and in the company of ... Wickliffe.


Boone follows the pair into the L’Hôtel, where there is a surreal sequence like a ghost train of different sessions, plenary sessions, break out sessions, tea breaks and so on.  
===Man overboard===
Boone’s arrives, looking for Graeber but he is gone. On his desk, an address scratched in the blotter: Leclerc, Leclerc et Cie, Ave. J F Kennedy.


Boone accosts the child but she — or he: it is oddly hard to tell — feigns ignorance. But I saw you at the alpha den.... Boone says “for a young person you find yourself in some grown up places. Do your parents know you’re here?”. She says she doesn’t ''have'' any parents. She looks nervous, shifty. Says she has to leave. She presses a card into Boone’s hand.  Barman gives a warning as Boone watched her melt into the crowd. “Careful sir. That is an agent.” He taps his nose and skies an eyebrow. “Strictly professional, if you know what I mean.” meanwhile Graeber tries unsuccessfully to liberate the waiting staff and gets thrown out.  
Realising the scope for disaster, Boone makes a beeline for the quarter, where eventually following powers of deduction, he finds Graeber, shaking down a poor Belgian netting attorney, bruised and bloody, babbling mindlessly about aleatory contracts (Graeber shouts “YES OR NO, GODDAMMIT”) and the avocat has just launched into a lengthy, sobbing description of what a Belgian corporation is not when Boone arrives, hauls Graeber out and remonstrates with him on the street by the ''Manneken Pis''.  


Hacienda scene. The girl is dead. Liquidated. Regulator stands over body. Very weird. There are no creditors. No parents. No records. No police file. No-one recognises her. Only record ties her back to a boarding house for orphans. In the Cayman Islands.
At just that moment Wickliffe’s silver sedan rolls by, catching Graeber’s attention. Wickliffe tells him to forget it and focus on the netting, but then sees the ''the child from the alpha den'', dressed immaculately and bejewelled, emerge from the sedan in the company of — ''Julian Wickliffe himself''. Both Boone and Graeber say, “there is that kid!”


CB radio interlude. It is Palmer-Jenkins. “Boone: you better get here fast. We’ve got a live ongoing situation. Suspected FWMD.
In his pocket the walkie-talkie screeches Graeber! Boone! If you don’t get back here! [The point of no return to normality]
===[[Melvin’s short squeeze]]===
Boone and Graeber hasten to a strip mall on the outskirts of the city where Melvin is holed up, barricaded in the GameStop premises. It’s in the old Blockbuster building. Melvin’s flagship fund vehicle — a twin-class 2/20 clipper out of Georgetown — is badly holed and leaking liquidity.  He’s shipping fire from all sides but — weird — the conventional combatants’ artillery depots are all silent. Third Point, Icahn and Pershing Missile have actually sent down a peace-keeping detachment. Ackman is crying.


The GameStop situation isn't over. Melvin squeaks “my shorts! My shorts! As the promontory on which he is marooned is thrust higher. The rate of ascent is slower but it is clear there is no way down
Boone thinks, fuck it, were committed now.


Opco is scarred from his experience at the battle for Cayman brac when, as a young communications officer in the famous Eagle Squad, led by the celebrated derivatives commander David Bundie, was all but wiped out
==[[The business day convention]]==
Boone and Graeber follow the pair into the L’Hôtel, where they lose them in the hubbub — there follows a surreal sequence of hallucinogenic images, like a ghost train of different sessions, plenary sessions, break out sessions, tea breaks and so on until Boone suddenly finds the child, propped up against a bar, looking anxious. In his swoon, Boone sees —or thinks he sees — multiple identical clone children, each being chaperoned by adults in dark glasses.


Boone accosts the child but she — or he? it is oddly hard to tell — does not recognise him.  They have a conversation, Boone again mistakenly quaffs vega, she presses a card into his hand and as Boone slurs and stumbles, is whisked away.


{{opcoscene|title=Deltaview Force|timeline=|characters=Opco, Algy, Janice Henderson, A.J., Roly Punchface, Squidboy Renfield, Annabel Lecteur [E?] |style=|summary=Eagle Squad goes undercover into demilitarised zone to clear out derelict building [WHY/WHERE] with its device for searching for material differences. They detect movement with the deltaview, thinking they have found a [[Biggs particle]]. Behind them, they find a live squidboy in the rubble. He is booby-trapped with red herrings and unapproved pitchbooks.  Squad radios back to base to get a Chinese wall thrown up. There is a CBT countdown alert. EVentually he gives up the pitchbook: [[Lexrifyly]] IPO. AJ picks it up to browse. He gets sucked in by the mesmerising text. Squidboy burbles about how clever the technology is, A.J. gets sucked into the vortex. Opco grabs the squidboy and goes in after him}}
==[[Hacienda]]==
The second time do Boone wakes from a Vega-induced Stupor. He is in a luxury GFS suite at the Hacienda. Satin is rumpled and next to him a still, sleeping, alien form. It is the kid. He does not know how he got there but reaches out to touch its form to find it is quite cold. At the same time he notices a small hole in the window, billowing the sheer curtains, and a trickle of blood between the youth’s shoulder-blades.


{{opcoscene|title=Enigma Variations|timeline=|characters=|style=|summary=For years [[GC|GCHQ]] has protected sensitive communications with a syntactic scrambler code language. Arrayed with sophisticated defensive systems such as prolixity dumps and syntactical contortion arrays — GCHQ has forged an impregnable iron dome of textual impenetrability that has permitted vital communications to take place uninterrupted, un intercepted, in real-time.
The cables from an exterior window cleaning unit run outside the window. Did he see someone in a suit? Boone gives chase but he is still woozy from the Vega. By the time he gets to the ground the man has gone. He races back up to the room, but to his horror find the cleaning staff are in the room and there is no sign of the body.


But in recent weeks it is as if the enemy can anticipate our every move. Legal Squad agents are getting intercepted during what should have been routine courier drops.
The child is dead. Liquidated. The regulator is already there, standing over the body. Very weird. There are no creditors. No parents. No records. No police file. No-one recognises her. Only record ties her back to a boarding house for orphans. In the Cayman Islands. Boone picks up her wallet. There is a card saying only “[[Ugland House]], 121 South Church Street, George Town.”


And at the same time the double-oh command has changed up its own encryption. Central interpretation units — the Eagle Squad “Enigma Machine” has been struggling to decipher COO communications. Whatever they run through it turns up banal, random words, or cancels down to nothing at all — like there is no content in the message at all.
CB radio interlude. It is Palmer. “Boone: where the hell are you?


For months engineers work on the codebreaker but cannot improve the results. Just utter, face-slapping, moronic gibberish, however we render it. The double Ohs are communicating freely though this impenetrable channel, and we can’t do a thing to stop them.  
Boone dissembles and mumbles.  


Boone suddenly sees it: the overwhelming scale of the challenge that faced the team. “Lines and lines of utter gibberish...That’s... it. That’s exactly it. It’s .... GENIUS”.
“Well truth be told, I don’t care where you are. Just get yourself here, and fast. We’ve got a live ongoing situation. Suspected FWMD.”


Boone barked into his wristcomm. “Algy! Janice! Let’s go!”}}
==[[Melvin’s short squeeze]]==
Boone and Graeber hasten to a strip mall on the outskirts of the city where a police cordon is formed, and a press scrum assembled. Melvin is holed up, barricaded in the GameStop premises. It’s in the old Blockbuster building. Melvin’s flagship fund vehicle — a twin-class 2/20 clipper out of Georgetown — is badly holed and leaking liquidity.  He’s shipping fire from all sides but — weird — the conventional combatants’ artillery depots are all silent. Third Point, Icahn and Pershing Missile have actually sent down a peace-keeping detachment. Ackman is crying. The flak seems to be coming from the demilitarised civilian quarters.


{{opcoscene|title=NAV Trigger Point|timeline=|characters= Boone, Denning, A.J.|style=Philip K Dick|summary=Boone floats above a planet, a legal eagle unchained and at the peak of his powers, surveilling the flickering taxo-grid below. Delirious, and egged on to do it by his Digital Voice Assistant Denning, he unshackles himself from his flight harness and floats free of all constraints, before feeling himself falling to earth, as the tranquil operations of the Risk management matrix collapse into reds and burst into flames. Denning won’t — can’t — override the control settings, and placidly watches as Boone falls and the planet is engulfed in disaster. Boone snaps out of a delirious dream with J-Rod and A.J  frantically trying to wake him. There is an emergency scramble. Legal Squad is mobilising.  }}{{opcoscene|title=SIV Endgame|timeline= |characters=Bundie and his Unit (Frenchie, Chipstowe, Biff, Tucker, Swart, and a young private named Obadiah Boone, together with radio operator at base Cassie Lieberman [COULD BE E/Annabel Lecteur]|style= Battle/All Quiet on Western Front.|summary=MCA drops remaining irregulars unit on the beach at Cayman brac. The mission is to liberate is a detachment of SICAVs help captive by enemy stock lending counterparts who are using it as a cheap source of sales credits. Tucker shows off his new “Liquidator” weapon. Chippy sets it off and Bundie shouts at them to be quiet. A huge mechanical SIV bursts through the trees and advances on them. The unit engages with the SICAV using several FWMDs such as self-referencing CLNs, CSAs and a sawn-off repo The SICAV doesn’t seem to be weakening under fire. They begin to realise this is no ordinary SICAV. Bundie bids young Obadiah take cover behind a tree stump and he bravely goes in to fight for his men. But it is a losing battle. Slowly the boys in the unit succumb: Tucker, Chipper, Swart and then Frenchie is blown apart from close range.|text=SIV Endgame: An Opco Boone Adventure}}
“But that is impossible. The proles don’t have anything like the firepower. Melvin is big - he’s got strong supply lines running back... this can’t be happening!”


{{opcoscene|title=The Armourer|timeline=13|characters=Hare, AJ, Burke|style=|summary=Young AJ is learning from Hare [Palmer Jenkins] how to strip a Calc Agent Appointment Side Letter. He graduates to an Engagement Letter with an NDA “Silencer”. The Kid catches a number of defects Hare hadn’t noticed. Irritated, Hare sends him out to the Armoury for a long weight. Burke meets him [Annabel Lecteur/E/Cassie Lieberman]. Burke sends him to the stacks for a long weight, where A.J. finds all the classics of the FWMD Canon including a [[Biggs hoson]]. The Biggs is missing, “removed for [[security]] purposes”.}}
The [[GameStop]] situation isn't over. Melvin squeaks “my shorts! My shorts! As the promontory on which he is marooned is thrust higher. The rate of ascent is slower but it is clear there is no way down.


{{opcoscene|title=The Gathering Storm|timeline=15 |characters=Sweeney, Roly Punchface, A.J. Paul|style=[[hary poter]]|summary=Sweeney is stuck in a dead-end clerical job at Barringtons. Getting rings runaround him by Roly Punchface. AJ accosts him with the challenge of the call of adventure.}}
Graeber flees into the retail maelstrom, taking bedding and placards he has at last found his calling.


{{opcoscene|title=The Last SPV|timeline=|characters=|style=|summary=Espievies are dying out. Global regulatory warming is making their usual habitats hostile. Traditional breeding grounds are becoming increasingly polluted by a parasite which feeds on them: the red tapeworm. There are some mature specimens with legacy Tax rulings, known as “the grand-fathers” — but these are a finite commodity, are protected against hunting, in designated wildlife sanctuaries and in any case trade at massive premia on the black market. Some poachers break into the sanctuaries of northern Europe where there experimental breeding programmes designed to reintroduce them for benign taxation planning .Suddenly there is talk of a new supply of synthetic SPVs flooding in from eastern Europe somewhere.
[[John Thomas “J.T.” Palmer|J.T. Palmer]] hollers “Graeber! Graeber! You'll be killed! But to no avail.


Onboarding in the Meadows outside Moor Gate. Young Roly arrives with a tote-bag of espievies he says he has caught in Bretton Wood. The onboarders are unimpressed, assigning them a three priority, being Portuguese SGPS. Throw out a non-netting Qatari vehicle, the dogs wolf it down. The last is a Panamanian tax vehicle. The onboarders freak and shout at Roly to take it away.}}
===Clear-out of the retail ghettos===
IOSCO tanks roll into the demilitarised zone, bombing civilian facilities in the search for concealed FWMD. Wickliffe lends munitions and vehicles to the effort, pulling out pink-haired day traders in a cynical show trials that suggest some malign retail force, and that Wickliffe and the professional industry is the victim.


{{opcoscene|title=The Lion’s Den|timeline=|characters=|style=|summary=Opco tracks down old  fellow vet Felix. As the owner of a chain of Vega Dens, Felix has underworld connections. Boone is looking for leads to whoever is importing N02 into the EU. He realises too late that it is Felix himself. Felix monologues. Felix’s henchmen disarm Boone and prepare to throw him to a Batman style doom where he is tied up and allowed the opportunity to escape while some unfeasibly gravitational process that will, eventually, kill him is allowed to run its course.}}
Meanwhile a resistance is brewing — the Occupy Wall Street movement led by none other than Officer Graeber.


{{opcoscene|title=The Taxonomy of Doom|timeline=|characters= Opco, Algy and Janice|style=[[Hary poter]]|summary=The children file into the Defence Against Indemnities classroom to find the professor is not there, and Imelda Skagghead taking the class instead. Professor Cavalier has been reassigned. Her teaching style has been found to be out-dated. It no longer accords with industry best practice. Skagghead presents the very latest in modern risk management! It calculates and monitors all risks, tabulates them, and provides an overall risk rating. Risk is assessed as ambient, but legal operating cost is too high. Roly asks how the machine can tell risk is ambient and legal cost too high: The answer: key performance indicators. This, says Imelda Skaghead, is why Professor was let go. He was just too expensive.}}
Attention is thus diverted toward the retail clear outs and the protests, while the FWMD smuggling can continue apace.


{{opcoscene|title=Where Legal Eagles Dare|timeline=|characters=Boone, Algy, J-Rod. Kurzweil and Bugsy.|style=Battle|summary=Algy, Boone and J-Rod watch the COO battle truck roar across the dessert. After a wristcom argument with Chip, GC, Boone sends the dirt bikes off to intercept, and leaps off the cliff in his wingsuit. The Battletruck wipes out a couple of stray doc-jocks but otherwise can’t understand the imminent attack signal. Boone lands on the roof of the cab and fights Kurzweil. He prevails but there is a detonation counter ticking down on the dash. Kurzweil recovers and resumes the fight. Boone is knocked out. Kurzweil regains control of the battletruck and doubles down. Boone is in a semi-conscious stupor recalling his school days with Algy and J-Rod. Algy and Janice arrive on their bikes. Algy jumps the truck and lands on its roof. Kurzweil ties insensate Boone to the wheel and prepares to decamp as they approach the settlement. Kurzweil hears Algy in the back of the truck and goes to investigate. Algy cold cocks him and hoofs him out the door. He resets the counter, turns the truck back towards the COO compound and exits, walking back to the settlement.}}
Boone notices the grey sedan, with the driver, going the other way.


{{opcoscene|title=Raptor Patrol|timeline=1997|characters=M.T. Emsworth|style=Blade Runner|summary=Enron Trooper MT Emsworth lands her Raptor outside an abandoned strip mall, not far from the gushing torrent of the nascent information superhighway. After an argument with her droid, she goes in on a routine patrol. She finds tied up Blockbuster execs, and one dead body on a pile of rubble. It seems the CEO has gone rogue, killed his head of digital ventures and tied up the board. Emsworth lays out a plan for them to escape across the digital footbridge. It involves a forty-year broadband capacity swap, which Emsworth will mark to market.}}
==[[The alpha dens]]==
Background in the synthetic alpha industry. The problem is the massive downside tail risk.


{{opcoscene|title=Retail Wars|timeline=|characters=Melvin, E, |style=|summary=Melvin’s [ROLY?] tragic character arc from not terribly good soldier to preying on innocent retail victims, and eventually the retail victims ganging up on him in his personal apotheosis. Increasingly sordid episodes where Melvin’s lack of moral fibre and corruption become increasingly evident as he spirals into depravity. Starts with a routine patrol to clear out a brinks and mortar emplacement across the old information superhighway. Melvin reminisces about his brass barrelled OSLAS and falls into a reverie about his old commander Bundie, warning the class of the likely slip in standards in future weaponry by the I.S.D.A.  And he was dead right. Melvin snaps back to patrolling the greyfield strip mall, with E in his comlink. He takes on a videodrome. Expecting it to be dead and deserted, Melvin is surprised to see the radiation is unusually high. Melvin goes on closer and finds a hopped out long-head retail partisan. Melvin shorts him, killing the stock, and closes out his short with the partisan’s open position. He makes a small turn and gets a feel for blood.
It becomes clear to Boone that all these brokers are lined up the same way, all are geared to make a
small but accumulative commission return on these alpha hounds on their alpha, but no-one is factoring in the ''negative'' alpha.


Days later Enron blows.
Romanian is “the adviser”, with plausibly deniable tendrils stretching back through Enron, ltcm, Madoff back to the south sea bubble etc. He extracts rent from the venture, and limits liability, and is gone before you know you are fucked, leaving no trace.


Meanwhile E tries to act as whistle-blower and is pooed by higher-ups who are enjoying the easy revenue. Far from being suspended, Palmer-Jenkins reassigns him and funds him.
He moves effortlessly above us, he is mimetic, and invisible and a disposition. Confusion, misplaced certainty, safety, comfort. A false sense of security. A personalisation of hubris. Romanian reduces back to law firm partner.
PJ quote “it seems this short selling business is not terribly difficult.”


Make it look that he was lured into a trap in.
BH is the Romanian. Pulls out his money before the final collapse. The fund is all limited recourse, there is no way back to him. Meantime the wounded victims call up their mercenary consulting firms to manage the unwind and shareholders fallout, and there he is again , the adviser. He is Wickliffe's nemesis though Wickliffe doesn't realise it.


Melvin moves on - his next mission he stumbles into the GameStop arcade.}}
Babbling idiots in executive suite as a running theme. Chip wants it to happen? Oh yes, I did I? I'm dashed if I can't remember. It seemed a jolly good idea, didn't it?


Idea that limited recourse cell dies and leaves nothing for coroner, receivers to do.


The race is on to find the potential source


{{opcoscene|title=|timeline=|characters=|style=|summary=}}
Need a setback
{{opcoscene|title=|timeline=|characters=|style=|summary=}}
</div>

Latest revision as of 10:21, 1 April 2023

The Adventures of Opco Boone, Legal Ace™


Index: Click ᐅ to expand:
Opco Boone
Finance fiction

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main character arcs The lender of last resort (LOL)

Boone’s parents, subject matter experts, were killed in Boone’s infancy when an outsourcing delivery van by a vega-hopped rent-jacker collided with their

lawyer with recession-proof business and the cosmological constant

Consulting the mad scientist Dr hans zarkov style havid Dilbert, to work out what is going on

Oh my god there are dirty derivatives bombs embedded in every retail portfolio. If they can somehow be discharged together in a coordinated way

It's not possible

Unthinkable

Yes but not impossible

There have been small experiments... What I'd these are just the start?

J.T. Palmer backstory - partner at same firm. At end, he is summoned back to his alma mater only to be not celebrated, but whacked, Goodfellow style and replaced as GC be a young partner... Roly Punchface

Punchface history — advised on many failed deals each of which generated more work in workouts, insolvencies. Apparent defiance of gravity turns out not to be gravity defying at all, but embracing. What is rent extraction to you is revenue generation for me: just giving fast, effective, timely and final proactive does not maximise returns. I need to sow uncertainty, doubt and create reliance. My product is dependence through the appearance of safety. All the better if that safety is in fact illusory.

Enforcement agencies are stretched to breaking point covering a raft of intergovernmental accords. It is tense. Tempers simmer. between them, the Exclusion Zone. Where neither regulatory perimeter stretches.

Offworld Bad-Bank Clean-Up Units send in remote-control SPVs to manage the tail risk. They’re dangerous machines: they can only operate in this toxic environment using off-balance-sheet technology that, after the great crash, is banned in the major residential markets. They have multi-core legal personalities – every now and then, one flames out. Its core shuts down and they carry on. They re-spawn.

Some go rogue. There is an ever-present danger of them escaping back into the major retail worlds.

Cayman is the off-world where forces deploy wealth creation bots – tax sheltering – film partnerships – basic entertainment model that exploits tax breaks for film subsidies – but not allowed on the onworld

Above the legal settlement the Cardozo Dam, and above it Lake Indeterminacy. Its massive assumption turbines powering the legal community, who live under the spell of collective nightmares (“ultramares”) of a colossal, potentially unending avalanche from above.

Where is marked on a white stick in the lake Abe right line above which indeterminacy has become so high that the floodgates automatically open. The community has worked for many years erecting qualification sluices, entry barriers and comprehension baffles to ensure that the bright line is never crossed.

The fables of the First Men

In primary school, Nurse Travers reads the orphans stories from myths and legends of the citadel, including the story of Reg Margin and the tricksy jester Vlad Paripasu.


End point

The crew feverishly race to stop the final cataclysm as the concatenated chain of FWMDs threaten to engulf the financial world once again. They avert disaster before realising that the whole financial world as, inadvertently, passed over the entropic event horizon of utter tedium and mathematically now has no choice but to roam forever towards the great, misty, tan entropic nothingness of the hereafter. The iron mountain.

The break-in

Having determined that Wickliffe is behind the smuggling operation, in the knowledge that the deployment is going to be unleashed to destroy the Cardozo Dam Legal squad orchestrates breakin to Central intelligence on Wickliffe Hampton. There is a briefing scene at legal squad HQ with a a map and strategy 4 drop then the the night of the raid apparently goes off without a hitch, the squad encountering only outsourced defence systems. The further into the citadel they get the more it becomes apparent that everything has been outsourced and there is in fact no controlling brain, but Wickliffe Hampton is like a a zombie what controlled by automatic impulse from without.

They trace all the way to the credit unit, only to realise it too is staffed by volunteers and children and dilettantes who are only worried about their revenue stream, most of which is coming from

The exclusion zone

When they signed the armistice the remaining banking superpowers resolved that never again would they engage in such futile destructive behaviour.

By BCB accord, use of FWMDs was forever banned, the superpowers agreeing, by conference at Bretton Woods, to create a multi-partite peacekeeping force with wide-ranging powers of inspection. Peacetime use of controlled derivative devices to power and heat for the world’s financial markets was, of course, permitted, but a pan-global regulatory force could inspect at any time.

Meanwhile, the BCBH established five-sigma exclusion zones around the still-smouldering ruins left over from the great financial war, while massive IOSCO transport helicopters flew continuous missions over the “Lehman sarcophagus,” dumping gigatons of flame-retardant liquidity upon it and similar sites for years after the armistice.

Gradually, the financial world returned to stability and progress. The were, of course, flare-ups: no one expected a hiccup during routine testing at the massive BBA-LIBOR facilities in E14 in 2010 to cause a reactor meltdown, but the chain-reaction was swift and before it could be brought under control the gigantic IRS generators that powered much of London were knocked out for months. By the time the situation finally normalised, there had been significant casualties: not least when a transporter carrying upper management team ran out of plausibility and crash-landed on the very building housing the BOE’s crisis headquarters. The crash site was swiftly isolated and neutralised with credibility derivatives.

The education of Private Melvin

Melvin’s tragic character arc from not terribly good soldier to preying on innocent retail victims, and eventually the retail victims ganging up on him in his personal apotheosis. Increasingly sordid episodes where Melvin’s lack of moral fibre and corruption become increasingly evident as he spirals into depravity.

Starts with a routine patrol to clear out a bricks & mortar emplacement across the old information superhighway. Melvin reminisces about his brass-barrelled OSLAs and falls into a reverie about his old commander Bundie, warning the class of the likely slip in standards in future weaponry by the I.S.D.A. And he was dead right. Melvin snaps back to patrolling the greyfield strip mall, with E in his comlink. He takes on a videodrome. Expecting it to be dead and deserted, Melvin is surprised to see the radiation is unusually high. Melvin goes on closer and finds a hopped out long-head retail partisan. Melvin shorts him, killing the stock, and closes out his short with the partisan’s open position. He makes a small turn and gets a feel for blood.

Days later Enron blows.

Meanwhile E tries to act as whistle-blower and is pooh-poohed by higher-ups who are enjoying the easy revenue. Far from being suspended, Palmer reassigns Melvin and funds him.

Melvin moves on - his next mission he stumbles into the GameStop arcade. Make it look that he was lured into a trap in.


The Baker Street shakedown

Graeber is sitting in a squad-car waiting for his partner to return with coffee. An APB comes across the wireless about a cache of FWMDs in a grey car in the Baker Street area. At that moment a grey GMRA sedan runs a red light and Graeber knows he’s got his man. He pulls it over, demands to see in the trunk, and finds ... nothing. He shakes down the driver and his VIP passenger, with a 92 LFC in the solar plexus and demands to strip search the whole car. He rousts the trunk, throwing stuff into the street, then opens the back door and — there is this androgynous, youthful, dolphin-like being — Graeber is smitten, and is stammering an apology when his partner, Officer Melvin R Melvin, arrives with the coffees and donuts, horrified and recognises that the VIP is none other than Julian Wickliffe, chairman of the WHAMDAQ and politically connected guy. He quickly lets the car go, apologising profusely. Wickliffe is complementary about him as he goes, to his great relief.

If course the dolphin is/is concealing the weapons cache

They return to base, Melvin warning Graeber he had better prepare himself for a bollocking.

An encounter at the vega den

Across the squad room, Boone hears the group commander’s booming voice.

“GRAEBERRRRRR!”

Opco leaves for an investigation.

Boone follows lead [NEEDS EVENT] that takes him undercover and into a “Vega Dens”, where supposedly legal synthetic alpha generators operate. underground clubs in London’s West End.

Opco tracks down old fellow vet Felix, who is now doing super well as the owner of a chain of Vega Dens. A vega dealer or “prime”, skims cash “commission” from clients but never partakes in its own product. “It’s just business.”

Unwisely, Boone accepts Felix’s offer of an alpha tray, assuring Boone that is is a legal, harmless high. It is served by a beautiful, otherworldly child. The child seems curiously unengaged. Dissociated. Boone goes to ask the child for more information but as it does the alpha takes hold and Boone falls deep into the well.

As Boone sleeps, The Romanian enters his chamber and arranges compromising pictures with the youth, then says.

“All right, Signa, get this schmuck out of here.”

Improbably strong, the slight youth lifts boone over one shoulder and takes him out.

Boone wakes up in a strange room, realises he is late for an all hands meeting back at the office and makes haste back.

Netting detail

Reverie

Meanwhile things slowly turned to normal for commando Opco Boone of the I.S.D.A.’s crack drafting squad. He can’t stop thinking about the kid with the vacant eyes.

Thoughts snap back to coalface. A colossal wall of tedious shit.

Though still shell-shocked, he has a desk job now as a once promising career ran stale and drifted into dead end — netting compliance — but he quietly bridles at the timidity of his role, the department, and the uneasy peace of the post-crisis world. His hand still shakes and he has PTSD whenever anyone says “margin”.

New crew

His CO asks for his report. He follows him into the office and lays it down: unkempt, stuffed with scraps of paper, scrawled notes, faxed sheets.

Opco is following a series of odd coincidences which are turning him to a view that mysterious forces are gathering in the shadows, and is privately collecting evidence to assemble a theory and back his theory up. The Vega Dens of Soho are building up odd concentrations of correlation. That is what you would expect, in Vega addicts, but Boone believes the dealers are getting correlated.

CO stops him, irritated and disinterested with his ludicrous theories, and urges Boone to get on with the netting analysis, which needs to be done by Friday, or there will be serious (internal, formalistic, consequences).

Boone complains that there is so much to do, and it is all so boring, and CO says, the good news is you have a new team member to help you.

It is Graeber, who has been demoted out of Eagle Squad. He has been put out of harm’s way on the netting detail for the duration of the joint association working group business day convention that is being held in town.

Anxious to avoid further disruption or embarrassment from loose cannons while the Joint Association Working Group’s Business Day Convention is in town, and the precinct is overflowing with the luminaries of Military Financial Complex, Palmer assigns them Graeber to Boone’s to netting detail. “The guy’s a liability. See if you can’t keep him out of trouble for a week would you?”

Learning the ropes

Boone is unhappy but has no choice. He starts to train Graeber on netting and assigns him Luxembourg as his first jurisdiction. Very important to get clear, succinct summary.

Netting epiphany postponed

Graeber works at the Luxembourg opinion, until late in the night. He cannot make head or tail of it. The schedules, the assumptions, the reference to obscure provisions of Germanic law and the Napoleonic code. The defs, the anti defs, the assumptions and the qualifications.

Dawn is coming up and, delirious, Graeber resolves to pay the Luxembourg lawyer a visit.

Graeber has made a beeline for an avocat’s office in Av. John F Kennedy in the Belgian Quarter. As Palmer’s bad luck would have it, L’Hôtel des Grandes Moules Frites, the venue for the Business Day Convention, also happens to be in the Belgian quarter, in avenue J F Kennedy.

Man overboard

Boone’s arrives, looking for Graeber but he is gone. On his desk, an address scratched in the blotter: Leclerc, Leclerc et Cie, Ave. J F Kennedy.

Realising the scope for disaster, Boone makes a beeline for the quarter, where eventually following powers of deduction, he finds Graeber, shaking down a poor Belgian netting attorney, bruised and bloody, babbling mindlessly about aleatory contracts (Graeber shouts “YES OR NO, GODDAMMIT”) and the avocat has just launched into a lengthy, sobbing description of what a Belgian corporation is not when Boone arrives, hauls Graeber out and remonstrates with him on the street by the Manneken Pis.

At just that moment Wickliffe’s silver sedan rolls by, catching Graeber’s attention. Wickliffe tells him to forget it and focus on the netting, but then sees the the child from the alpha den, dressed immaculately and bejewelled, emerge from the sedan in the company of — Julian Wickliffe himself. Both Boone and Graeber say, “there is that kid!”

In his pocket the walkie-talkie screeches Graeber! Boone! If you don’t get back here! [The point of no return to normality]

Boone thinks, fuck it, were committed now.

The business day convention

Boone and Graeber follow the pair into the L’Hôtel, where they lose them in the hubbub — there follows a surreal sequence of hallucinogenic images, like a ghost train of different sessions, plenary sessions, break out sessions, tea breaks and so on until Boone suddenly finds the child, propped up against a bar, looking anxious. In his swoon, Boone sees —or thinks he sees — multiple identical clone children, each being chaperoned by adults in dark glasses.

Boone accosts the child but she — or he? it is oddly hard to tell — does not recognise him. They have a conversation, Boone again mistakenly quaffs vega, she presses a card into his hand and as Boone slurs and stumbles, is whisked away.

Hacienda

The second time do Boone wakes from a Vega-induced Stupor. He is in a luxury GFS suite at the Hacienda. Satin is rumpled and next to him a still, sleeping, alien form. It is the kid. He does not know how he got there but reaches out to touch its form to find it is quite cold. At the same time he notices a small hole in the window, billowing the sheer curtains, and a trickle of blood between the youth’s shoulder-blades.

The cables from an exterior window cleaning unit run outside the window. Did he see someone in a suit? Boone gives chase but he is still woozy from the Vega. By the time he gets to the ground the man has gone. He races back up to the room, but to his horror find the cleaning staff are in the room and there is no sign of the body.

The child is dead. Liquidated. The regulator is already there, standing over the body. Very weird. There are no creditors. No parents. No records. No police file. No-one recognises her. Only record ties her back to a boarding house for orphans. In the Cayman Islands. Boone picks up her wallet. There is a card saying only “Ugland House, 121 South Church Street, George Town.”

CB radio interlude. It is Palmer. “Boone: where the hell are you?

Boone dissembles and mumbles.

“Well truth be told, I don’t care where you are. Just get yourself here, and fast. We’ve got a live ongoing situation. Suspected FWMD.”

Melvin’s short squeeze

Boone and Graeber hasten to a strip mall on the outskirts of the city where a police cordon is formed, and a press scrum assembled. Melvin is holed up, barricaded in the GameStop premises. It’s in the old Blockbuster building. Melvin’s flagship fund vehicle — a twin-class 2/20 clipper out of Georgetown — is badly holed and leaking liquidity. He’s shipping fire from all sides but — weird — the conventional combatants’ artillery depots are all silent. Third Point, Icahn and Pershing Missile have actually sent down a peace-keeping detachment. Ackman is crying. The flak seems to be coming from the demilitarised civilian quarters.

“But that is impossible. The proles don’t have anything like the firepower. Melvin is big - he’s got strong supply lines running back... this can’t be happening!”

The GameStop situation isn't over. Melvin squeaks “my shorts! My shorts! As the promontory on which he is marooned is thrust higher. The rate of ascent is slower but it is clear there is no way down.

Graeber flees into the retail maelstrom, taking bedding and placards he has at last found his calling.

J.T. Palmer hollers “Graeber! Graeber! You'll be killed! But to no avail.

Clear-out of the retail ghettos

IOSCO tanks roll into the demilitarised zone, bombing civilian facilities in the search for concealed FWMD. Wickliffe lends munitions and vehicles to the effort, pulling out pink-haired day traders in a cynical show trials that suggest some malign retail force, and that Wickliffe and the professional industry is the victim.

Meanwhile a resistance is brewing — the Occupy Wall Street movement led by none other than Officer Graeber.

Attention is thus diverted toward the retail clear outs and the protests, while the FWMD smuggling can continue apace.

Boone notices the grey sedan, with the driver, going the other way.

The alpha dens

Background in the synthetic alpha industry. The problem is the massive downside tail risk.

It becomes clear to Boone that all these brokers are lined up the same way, all are geared to make a small but accumulative commission return on these alpha hounds on their alpha, but no-one is factoring in the negative alpha.

Romanian is “the adviser”, with plausibly deniable tendrils stretching back through Enron, ltcm, Madoff back to the south sea bubble etc. He extracts rent from the venture, and limits liability, and is gone before you know you are fucked, leaving no trace.

He moves effortlessly above us, he is mimetic, and invisible and a disposition. Confusion, misplaced certainty, safety, comfort. A false sense of security. A personalisation of hubris. Romanian reduces back to law firm partner.

BH is the Romanian. Pulls out his money before the final collapse. The fund is all limited recourse, there is no way back to him. Meantime the wounded victims call up their mercenary consulting firms to manage the unwind and shareholders fallout, and there he is again , the adviser. He is Wickliffe's nemesis though Wickliffe doesn't realise it.

Babbling idiots in executive suite as a running theme. Chip wants it to happen? Oh yes, I did I? I'm dashed if I can't remember. It seemed a jolly good idea, didn't it?

Idea that limited recourse cell dies and leaves nothing for coroner, receivers to do.

The race is on to find the potential source

Need a setback

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