Negotiation oubliette: Difference between revisions

{{a|negotiation|[[File:Wormhole.jpg|center|450px|thumb|“All right, well what about [[cross acceleration]]? With a [[grace period]]? And a carve-out for operational error?”]]}}{{oubliette capsule}}

It is where you will go, taking the whole negotiation with you, the moment anyone proposes to accommodate any of the infinite count of [[tail event]]s that in logical theory could but in recorded history never have come about. Seeing an oubliette coming early is vital, as is the right response, since falling into it is very easy to do. The notion of a “clabby conversation” translates very well into the world of [[contract negotiation]].

Let’s say your [[credit department]] has it in its head that [[cross default]] is an important protection in a [[Securities financing transaction|securities financing arrangement]]. This is a peculiar view, shared by few in the market and lacking a solid base in common sense, but of such gems of incongruous conviction propel many a livelihood in the Square Mile and we should not gainsay them. They are inexplicable brute facts of the universe, like the cosmological constant or the popularity of golf.

Your [[credit officer]] will say, “well, [[it won’t hurt]] to just ''ask''” for a cross default, but just asking will prompt a discussion the parties needn’t otherwise have had, about the sorts of fantastic calamities that might come about in the possible universes that risk managers visit in their delirious dreams. The hypotheticals thrown into this debate will be as imaginative as they are tendentious: there will be a tangible air of prepostery emanating from either side’s submissions. But such is the path-dependency of negotiation: had no-one started this ball rolling, on a whim, none of imaginative perversity would have been given voice. Before you know it, the parties will be reciting the 14 stations of [[set-off]]. Perhaps they will canvass Someone will have the idea of importing some definitions from the {{isdama}}, and from there all hope is lost. There is one way back, an infinite number of ways forward, into the abyss, and negotiators have no reverse gear.