The devil is not in the detail. The devil is the detail: Difference between revisions

← Older edit

The devil is not in the detail. The devil is the detail (view source)

Revision as of 14:09, 8 February 2023

15 bytes added , 8 February 2023

no edit summary

Amwelladmin

Bureaucrats, Interface administrators, Administrators

82,891

edits

@@ Line 3: / Line 3: @@
 {{image|Devil in the Detail II|png|''Devil in the Detail II''. {{vsr|1959}}}}
 }}{{Quote|
-{{dsh god in the gaps quote}}}}
+{{dsh god in the gaps quote}}
 :—{{Buchstein}}, {{dsh}}}}
 It is a well-worn trope: there is so much one can commoditise, but the final mile is across ice-fields and shattered obsidian and you must walk it in the moccasins of deep expertise, lest you cut your feet to the bone. It may be true that 80 per cent of your bond documentation is [[boilerplate]], but the rest — oof — is a monster.
@@ Line 33: / Line 31: @@
 Even sophisticated financial institutions — ''especially'' sophisticated financial institutions — need  easily to render their contracts in simple fundamental terms, because that is how they risk manage them.
-There is no machine,<ref>Not even the mythical [[Contract analysis|J.P. Morgan loan reading machine]] of [[Daniel Susskind|Susskind]] fan fiction.</ref> and certainly no human being, in the bowels of an investment bank that is constantly monitoring the text of its {{isdama}} battery to ensure every covenant is performed, every representation true, every implicit [[option]] buried in a contingent fallback exercised, or costed, [[as the case may be]]. These contracts are reduced to their a few basic economic parameters: that is all the firm’s creaking IT infrastructure can manage. The rest — those lawyer-confected paranoid contingencies the firm paid so handsomely for; that deal with unfeasible externalities, improbable scenarios and outlying tail risks are buried, filed away, to be dealt with, absent any context, by the legal eagles in the heat of the improbably moment that they should arise.<ref>Come to think of it, it is a wonder there ''isn’t'' a squadron of waxen, hairless drones buried in some call centre in Bucharest rifling through that mountain of documents manually covering off that exact risk. It would make a great subplot for an [[Opco Boone]] adventure, in fact.</ref>
+There is no machine,<ref>Not even the mythical [[Contract analysis|J.P. Morgan loan reading machine]] of [[Daniel Susskind|Susskind]] fan fiction.</ref> and certainly no human being, in the bowels of an investment bank that is constantly monitoring the text of its {{isdama}} battery to ensure every covenant is performed, every representation true, every implicit [[option]] buried in a contingent fallback exercised, or costed, [[as the case may be]]. These contracts are reduced to their a few basic economic parameters: that is all the firm’s creaking IT infrastructure can manage. The rest — those lawyer-confected paranoid contingencies the firm paid so handsomely for; that deal with unfeasible externalities, improbable scenarios and outlying tail risks are buried, filed away, to be dealt with, absent any context, by the [[legal eagle]]s in the heat of the improbable moment that they should arise.
+Come to think of it, it is a wonder there ''isn’t'' a squadron of waxen, hairless drones buried in some call centre in Bucharest rifling through that mountain of documents manually covering off that exact risk. It would make a great subplot for an [[Opco Boone]] adventure, in fact.
-This extra detail is, therefore ''heft'': to the extent it confers optionality that the organisation [[Formal|formally]] ''and'' [[Substance and form|substantively]] knows nothing about and is in any case in no position to exploit; if it ''grants'' optionality, it is a risk the organisation has sold but is not managing in its books. In either case, the proverbial [[unknown known]]: we nod along and hope that, whatever happens it isn’t significant.
+This extra detail is, therefore simple ''heft'': to the extent it ''confers'' upon a firm optionality that the organisation [[Formal|formally]] ''and'' [[Substance and form|substantively]] knows nothing about it is, [[Q.E.D.]], in no position to exploit that right; if it ''grants'' optionality, it is a risk the organisation is short, but is not managing. In either case, the proverbial [[unknown known]]: we nod along and hope that, whatever happens, it isn’t significant.
 {{sa}}