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{{quote|“[[before an apocalypse becomes an apocalypse, it doesn’t look like an apocalypse|before an apocalypse ''becomes'' an apocalypse, it doesn’t ''look'' like an apocalypse]]”.}} | {{quote|“[[before an apocalypse becomes an apocalypse, it doesn’t look like an apocalypse|before an apocalypse ''becomes'' an apocalypse, it doesn’t ''look'' like an apocalypse]]”.}} | ||
The studied, logical outrage vouchsafed by those in the riskless position of having twenty-twenty hindsight and blaming the [[meatware]] ''was not available to those on deck at the time''. No-one ''knew'' or — at least until it was too late, even ''believed'' — | The studied, logical outrage vouchsafed by those in the riskless position of having twenty-twenty hindsight and engaged in the fruitless, if satisfying, pursuit of blaming the [[meatware]] ''was not available to those on deck at the time''. No-one ''knew'' or — at least until it was too late, even ''believed'' — that things would turn out like this. [[Q.E.D.]] | ||
Ergo, the decision calculus ''then'' was nowhere near as obvious as it appears ''now'', as an object in the rear-view mirror: if it had been, ''the [[Apocalypse|catastrophe]] would not have happened''. | |||
Furthermore, it is one thing to have a legal right to pull your trigger, it is quite another to resolve to use it. ''Especially'' if you don’t know how this all will play out. | Furthermore, it is one thing to have a legal right to pull your trigger, it is quite another to resolve to use it. ''Especially'' if you don’t know how this all will play out. | ||
''After'' the event, | ''After'' the event, the client is a smoking hulk; all that remains is twisted wreckage strewn across the landscape. ''Now'', it could not ''be'' more obvious: there was only ever one option. | ||
''Before'' it, there were twenty million dollars of annual revenues at stake: few individual risk managers will be prepared to blow up a key client on their own initiative, without diffusing responsibility through some kind of institutional [[Escalation circle|escalations]]. But going to a Counterparty Risk Oversight Committee takes time. And CROCs are fraught, intimidating things. To recommend affronting a [[platinum client]] is to invite a shellacking from those a long way further up the tree than you. | |||
Now: if ''these'' are the options, and our valiant risk manager doesn’t yet have that twenty-twenty hindsight of what might come about tomorrow — she won’t remember, ][[Q.E.D.]] — is it any wonder she’ll be tempted to do nothing? | |||
{{maxim|Before an apocalypse becomes an apocalypse, it doesn’t look like an apocalypse]]. |