Valuation

Though many persist in their denial, valuation is one of the great intractable ontological conundrums of the financial markets: in few other contexts does a jobbing attorney regularly get so close to the abyss. Really, close enough to press her nose against the glass, and stare balefully into the formless void where her intricate hermeneutic system runs out of rope. She can but watch in existential horror as the frayed hanks of her metaphyiscal hemp fringe that infinite vacuum.

Even the most assiduous haggler must, at some stage, just wave away the dealer polls, arbitration procedures, agreements to agree, mutually appointed experts and give up.

No president of the Law Society, yet, has been asked to intercede between warring factions to an illiquid credit derivative.