The Atlantis Variation
The 2008 ISDA Master Agreement, also known as the Atlantis agreement is a rumoured edition of the ISDA Master Agreement, which, according to legend, was almost completed in September 2008, but never saw the light of day, instead collapsing into dark energy that powers the hidden universe. If implemented, the 2008 ISDA Master Agreement would have addressed the financial, infrastructural and regulatory challenges which dominated the derivatives trading market in the early 21st century. It would have consolidated trading documentation across a wide range of products (including but not limited to repo, stock lending, prime brokerage, exchange traded derivatives, physical commodities and emissions, in so doing moving the financial world into a stable state of sunlit utopia; future-proofed agile legal agreements requiring no more than the cursory forensic management that could be garnered cheaply through unskilled personel in low-cost off-shore jurisdictions or, eventually, robots.
Speaking of robots, it is rumoured that Roy Batty’s speech from Blade Runner fell through a hole in the space-time continuum from something uttered by a CDO lawyer as Merrill Lynch collapsed into smoking ruins in 2008. What happened was that an ETD negotiator mocked him as he walked out the building with his gonk, his framed, autographed baseball shirt and his Iron Mountain box.
You thought you knew everything, didn't you, said the hapless futures expert. A now look at us. The CDO man turned, a replicant glimmer in his eye, and he said this:
- I’ve seen things you people wouldn't believe.
- Attack-ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion 2006-1 hybrid CDO.
- I watched mezzanine-tranches glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.
- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
- Time to retrain as a primary school teacher.
As it was, the challenge was just too big. The project expanded — at first gradually; in the closing stages at breakneck pace — and in the final days is believed to have exceeded its Schwarzschild radius altogether. There was a sudden, catastrophic implosion, and everything associated with the project — all traces of the agreement, earlier drafts, the firm ISDA engaged to coordinate the drafting (Messrs Tubb Fuller Breaden Potter Bacon)[1] and several thousand members of ISDA’s document working group seconded by their employers to contributing their “clarifications” and doubt-avoidances for the greater good of the standard form. All — the document, the personnel, and the drafting tedia — have been lost to history, and we now do not know what the agreement said, how it said it, or indeed whether the agreement really existed at all.