Financial disasters roll of honour: Difference between revisions

Financial disasters roll of honour (view source)

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 We all know those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it. But what of those who ''do'' remember history? Well, they are condemned to repeat it, too.
+[[Taleb]] famously laments the failure of financial services industry to learn from its errors. He contrasts it with the airline industry which has systemically improved safety after every air crash since the 1960s, such that the number of casualties per million miles travelled has dropped from 90 to a ''fraction''.
+But air-crash causes  and financial markets blow-ups are qualitatively different: air crashes causes are not necessarily human, or even sentient, and even when they are they are not ''actively searching for'' vulnerabilities in the risk monitoring landscape where no one is paying attention. If they find them, it is by chance, or undirected Brownian motion.
+Financial crash causes, by contrast, are ''always'' human, and an eligibility criteria for a blow up is that ''no-one is looking''. Either they have overlooked the potential for catastrophe, or some psychological or social pressure has intervened to distract them from it. Those that aren’t outright mendacious are propelled by base motives: doubling down to unwind fuck-ups, concealing losses, taking shortcuts to make easy money.  These things ''can’t'" happen in plain sight, so that perpetrators will be certain to do them where are no-one is looking.
 {{roll of honour}}
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 *[[The dog in the night time]]
 {{c|Devil’s Advocate}}