The ISDA Protocol: Difference between revisions

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{{a|opcoboone|}}
<div class="indent">{{a|opcoboone|}}main character arcs
<div class="indent">
The lender of last resort (LOL)
Pops trunk


Cache of antique fws
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


Can I see your FCA licence
lawyer with recession-proof business and the cosmological constant


Rich guy gets out tries to calm scene
Consulting the mad scientist Dr hans zarkov style havid Dilbert, to work out what is going on


I'm a collector
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  
It's not possible


Julian Wickcliffe
Unthinkable
== Background ==
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 [[FWMD]]<nowiki/>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.
Yes but not impossible


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


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]].
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
----''Interlude - the Rake’s Progress of Private Melvin, part 1: The crooked E. The  Early interaction with Graeber, whom Melvin bullies.''


== The shakedown ==
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.
Graeber sat shotgun in the parked-up cruiser, his brim over his eyes, drumming fingers on the dash. Boone was taking his sweet time. Then again, ''Chez Guevara'' was always busy. The cops’ favourite chow hangout: best donuts and coffee in Soho. The CB burbles: A.P.B. on some goons running about in a hot, late-model silver GMRA.  


There was a squabble of honks and squeals as crosswise traffic lock up by way of evasive action,  and a slick, sharkish sedan cruises, casual as you like, through a straight red light, and exits the intersection as illegally and with the same unruffled poise as it entered it. The sedate silver sedan rolls serenely on, like it ain't no thing, and Officer Cadet Lloyd T. Graeber III, of Eagle Squad Academy, sure as shit ain’t having that. He leaps out of the wagon pulls his piece and waves the driver down.  
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.


The sedan pulls over easy. The driver’s side window opens a crack.  
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.


Graeber pulls himself up to his full height. “Good morning, sir. Are you aware you just ran a red light back there?”
Some go rogue. There is an ever-present danger of them escaping back into the major retail worlds.


A burly man in a shiny suit looked back at him from the driver’s seat through a pair of aviators. “''Did'' I?”. The apologie played greasy and insincere. He thanked Graeber for being kind enough to bring the matter to his attention. He turned over the engine and began to wind up his window.
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


“Hold on, there, sir.”
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.  


The window wound back down. “Are we ''okay'', Officer?”
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.


“''We'" are just fine, sir. May ''we'' see your licence and KYC papers?”
==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]].


The driver read Graeber’s name and badge out loud. “Officer Cadet L. T  Graeber. ES-2423. That’s Eagle Squad, isn’t it?”


“Yes, sir. Academy, sir.”
===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.  


“Isn’t it a little ''below'' an officer from an elite Fin-Crime to be enforcing traffic rules?”
==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.


Graeber began a monologue. He knew it pat. It was the one he, and all Eagle Squad cadets, were drilled with from their first day: “If we let minor disorders go, invite major disorder to come —”
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 driver tried again: “I salute your commitment to defend our broken windows, officer. But, with respect, no windows got broken here. My client is a very important man. He is on his way to a very important meeting. With other very important people. Now, I would love to stop and chat, but today, alas, there just isn’t time. Now, if you—”
== [[The exclusion zone]] ==
When they signed the armistice the remaining banking superpowers resolved that never again would they engage in such futile destructive behaviour.  


“Important man?”
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.


The driver nodded, slowly. The rear window lowered six inches. A silver-haired man in sunglasses gave a celebrity smile, as if Graeber should know who he was. Next to him was an  androgynous, alien, but icily beautiful youth of indeterminate age.
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.


Officer Graeber did not recognise him. But he thought he recognised the kid, at least by type. He knew a vega hooker when he saw one.
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.  


“I am afraid  I am going to have to ask you to step out of the vehicle.”
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.


“Why, you little —”
Days later Enron blows.


In a fluid motion Graeber hauled the driver out of the car, shunted him across the bonnet, unholstered his piece and pressed its muzzle into the man’s neck and began to read him his rights. Let’s have your KYC papers
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.


The silver-haired passenger had emerged from the car. He said, “An un-netted ’92 L.F.C. I sure hope you have a licence for that, son —”
Melvin moves on - his next mission he stumbles into the GameStop arcade. Make it look that he was lured into a trap in.


“Lloyd, what’s going on? What the hell’s going on?”


Eagle Squad Commander Opco Boone, LLB Hons (2nd class) was standing on the pavement, clutching polystyrene cups and a paper bag of donuts, and regarding his partner with horror.
== 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


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


Opco believes unseen forces are gathering in the shadows, and is privately collecting evidence to 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 that will replace old style policing.
==[[An encounter at the vega den]]==
Across the squad room, Boone hears the group commander’s booming voice.  


Boone follows lead [NEEDS EVENT] that takes him into the “Vega Dens” supposedly legal synthetic alpha generators operating underground clubs in London’s west end. 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. As he sleeps, [The Romanian enters his chamber and arranges compromising pictures with the child.]
“GRAEBERRRRRR!”


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 vigard end in question. Wickliffe alleges ISDA harassment.
Opco leaves for an investigation.


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 while Boone himself is demoted and assigned to being detail with the office weirdo and conspiracy theorist Officer Graeber. J-rod wonders whether her old friend and mentor has finally lost it,
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.  


First day on netting duty,  Graeber won’t stop going on about his absurd (but consistently prescient) conspiracy theories. Meantime Boone shakes down a Luxembourg netting counsel. Counsel babbles about aleatory contracts and is just about to launch into a lengthy description of what a company isn’t when Boone catches sight of the child from the alpha den. She is dressed immaculately and bejeweled and I  the company of ... Wickliffe.
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.”


Boone follows the pair into the Grand Hotel where they have gone into a Business Day Convention.
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.  


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


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


CB radio interlude. It is Palmer-Jenkins. “Boone: you better get here fast. We’ve got a live ongoing situation. Suspected FWMD.
Improbably strong, the slight youth lifts boone over one shoulder and takes him out.


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


Boone: This must be some new kind of FWMD. A distributed denial of shortage attack.  
== [[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.


Melvin wails, “I can’t see it! I can’t stop it! My models are on the Fritz! 
Thoughts snap back to coalface. A colossal wall of tedious shit.


Graeber murmurs, “Oh, but this is ... ''beautiful''.”
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.  


Meanwhile Melvin’s position gets more untenable. GameStop seems to be rising out of the ground forced up from the depths of the earth by some collossal, demonic, monstrous force, as if the crust of the earth has been ruptured and a finger of rock is thrusting priaically into the heavens, with Melvin on it. It is horrifying. Seismic. Not possible. People shriek,“jump, Melvin, jump,”
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.


“Yeah, jump, Melvin!” Graeber cries demonically.
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).


At first he won’t — he doesn’t believe — and by the time he does it is too late. He frantically calls for help but the messages become weak and static-laden.  
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.  


Graeber: “Go on, jump!”
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.


Palmer Jenkins: “Graeberrrr! Get back here!”
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.


But Graeber has gone. He is running feverishly across the plain towards the hordes of barbarians shouting and weaving his arms.
==[[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 says, “what the hell is he doing!? They’ll kill him!”
Dawn is coming up and, delirious, Graeber resolves to pay the Luxembourg lawyer a visit.


“Only if I don’t get to him first,” muttered Palmer Jenkins, and started firing on him.
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.


Boone says, wait. There are unusual things happening here. This could be
===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.


“More margin. I need more margin ammunition... I can hold this: i just need more ammo.”
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''.  


But the supply line is stretched. The investor network is crumbling. Repo counterparts are bailing, wheeling round their massive margin cannons. Boone looked across the deserted badlands behind Melvin’s encampment. Lines of dust and haze rise in the setting sun as investors retreat. He can see low flying ISDA attack helicopters flying in. At the same time there is a grinding metallic groan which he realised is the sound of Melvin closing its collossal rusting redemption gates. The attack copters open fire. “Jesus,” he breathes. “This ain’t going to be pretty.”
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!”


But one stays, and lumbers ever closer. A massive earthmoving excavator in the battle markings of The Citadel, and starts boring a massive subterranean channel towards Melvin’s position. Boone, “he can’t. ''Surely''. This is suicide. The sacrifice of a perfectly valuable war unit. There’s no way they can hold out.” Still the relentless needlepricks of pain, from all across the plateau. From ''everywhere''. There’s no coordinated source. Then J-rod spots it. ''The ordnance all bears the blast signature of the same broker.''
In his pocket the walkie-talkie screeches Graeber! Boone! If you don’t get back here! [The point of no return to normality]


Not far from them, on a bluff, the field commander from the Robinhood might infantry piece keeping force is asleep.  
Boone thinks, fuck it, were committed now.


J-Rod kicks him out of the hammock. He falls with a hump.  
==[[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.


“What? What?”
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.


J-Rod barks, “you have to stop your supply”, but the field commander blows her off. “Ain't my problem, brah.”
==[[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.


What
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.


“I’m strictly retail. Nothing to do with me. I look after the little guys. Don't get involved with your big boy stuff. Soz. Now if you don’t mind —”
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.”


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


The thin golden miasma of tiny energy bolts, all weirdly, spookily trained on this one thin finger of rock, defying any of the usually safe random distributions you'd expect from the retail horde. It was if everyone molecule in a soup jumped two inches to the left. Theoretically possible but the odds against it astronomical.
Boone dissembles and mumbles.  


“Yeah, I guess that is pretty weird. But look, what do you want me to do? What can I do?” i’m an agent. A facilitator. Punters get execution. ''How'' they execute is not my look out. claims he can’t control it. “my, er, terms of service...” his voice trails off.
“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.”


Behind them another massive citadel earthmover pulls up.  
==[[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.


“Hey Jerry!” Robin looks pleased to see him. But the citadel unit CO has a grim look on his face. Bobby, we got to sit this down, man.
“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!”


“Huh?”
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.


“You heard me. Shut it down”.
Graeber flees into the retail maelstrom, taking bedding and placards he has at last found his calling.


Bobby Hood seems taken back. But it's —
[[John Thomas “J.T.” Palmer|J.T. Palmer]] hollers “Graeber! Graeber! You'll be killed! But to no avail.


“Shut it down, Bob.”
===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.


“I already told them. I can’t. I couldn't if I wanted to.”
Meanwhile a resistance is brewing — the Occupy Wall Street movement led by none other than Officer Graeber.


“Really, Bob?”
Attention is thus diverted toward the retail clear outs and the protests, while the FWMD smuggling can continue apace.


“Sure, Jerry.”
Boone notices the grey sedan, with the driver, going the other way.


The commander motions to the fixed line PFOF firehoses, flooding Robinhood’s revenue tanks. “Bob, we been friends a long time. It would be a hell of a shame if, ahh, that payment for orderflow supply were cut iff.”
==[[The alpha dens]]==
Background in the synthetic alpha industry. The problem is the massive downside tail risk.


Bob blinked in disbelief. His jaw worked. “Wha —? You couldn’t. You wouldn’t. ”
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.


The commander lifts up one of the pipes in his bare hands and folds it, cutting off the flow. 
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.
“jesus! Wait!, Robinhood wails, “But these are your orders!” Citadel nukes one of the hoses. “What?! Jesus! Oh, I think our er KYC, er capital position, um market stabilisation ah orderly market um spacetime continuum... we’ll need to close down open interest
and only allow position closure —”. “aim pleased we could see sense ” growled the citadel commander. “I am pleased we ... Understand each other.” He uncrimped the hose and the PFOF taps began to reflow. Robinhood collapsed in a torrent of reverential relief and starts humping and gorging on the outflow.
 
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
 
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.
 
He
 
{{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}}
 
{{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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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 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”.
 
Boone barked into his wristcomm. “Algy! Janice! Let’s go!”}}
 
{{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}}
 
{{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”.}}
 
{{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.}}
 
{{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.
 
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.}}
 
{{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.}}
 
{{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.}}
 
{{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.}}
 
{{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.}}
 
{{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.
 
Days later Enron blows.


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™
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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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