Template:M intro isda qualities of a good ISDA: Difference between revisions

''Fair'' agreements must be ''clear'' for customers to realise they are fair. ''Clear'' agreements will inspire ''confidence'', in your own staff, thus distracting them from the [[Casanova principle]] and toward ''fairness''. ''Clarity'' and ''fairness'' lends itself to ''consistency'', since your customers will find less cause to negotiate.''Clarity'',''fairness'', ''confidence'' and ''consistency'' make for ''simplicity'' a simple record that is easy to maintain, roll out and, heaven forfend, enforce.

{{Drop|[[Qualities of a good ISDA|F]]|airness as an}} abstract quality seems like one of those lip-servicey, all-very-well-in-theory ideas that got you good grades in that [[alternative dispute resolution]] module but is sure to ship a haymaker to the jaw on first contact with the real commercial world. We are enculturated to treat a negotiation as some kind of trench warfare: as if we are facing our mortal enemy and not our customer. It is true that our customers are similarly disposed, fairness never gets a chance to break out.

JC is by lifelong experience a [[sell-side]] guy: he comes at this from the perspective of a merchant contracting with its customers. Hip types call these “B2C” deals, but the JC is not a hip type. Merchant and customer are, generally, on the same side: their interests conflict but gently, and not viciously: the merchant wants a [[commission]] or a markup, the customer wants the product cheap, but beyond that we each wish earnestly for each other’s continued prosperity. Things can get chewy at the extremes, but most customers never get near a [[tail event|chewy extreme]].

Now we sell-siders may occasionally engage with ostensible ''hostiles'' — competitors for example — but when they do, they abide by an unspoken pact of [[good faith]] for the limited ends which have brought the warring sides together. They must, at some level, trust one other or at least have a common interest, or they would not contract at all.<ref>[[David Graeber]] makes a fascinating point when discussing the ''non''-origin of currency out from [[barter]]: [[barter]] is an arm’s length trade of equivalent goods conducted between parties who are dispositionally ''rivals'' and not partners. Once the exchange happens, nothing is left on the table; there is no presumption of enduring goodwill, no expectation of further business, or any kind of obligation undischarged. A barter is an exchange conducted with untrusted aliens. Inside your community, where there is trust, we are less compelled to extract our precise pound of flesh: there is a give and take; we let obligations lie undischarged and they acquire a moral quality. These are the ties that bind — the imperative becomes to ''avoid'' fully discharging our dues to each other. This is the relationship we should aspire to with our customers. We trust them to pay later — we extend ''credit''. (Hence money emerged not from fair value barter with strangers but as a way of evidencing indebtedness amongst those who knew each other. You don't extend credit to aliens.</ref>

A presumption of any negotiation is [[good faith]]. ''Some'' level of trust. We don’t negotiate with terrorists.