About a year ago we worked with a client who designed and developed financial trading software. We were immersed in the arcana of this century’s financial markets, learning about Credit Default Swaps, or as they are known to the financiscenti, CDS. Our time with our client and their customers (rogueish but not rogue traders) was an educational journey into a power-oriented, confrontational, macho culture. Indeed, this organization was a rocky place where our recommendations could find no purchase.
Now, here we collectively stand with our mutual fund statements as smoking ruins in our fists and the arcana is now mainstreama, with headlines like $62 Trillion Credit Default Swaps Threaten U.S. Government Bonds as common as can be.
Two responses: i) I didn’t do it. Nobody saw me do it. You can’t prove anything. ii) We told you so.
Tags: cds, credit default swaps, finance, global markets, money, traders
[...] I consider the culture of financial traders and then what happens when you don’t take that into account [...]
Pingback by All This ChittahChattah » All This ChittahChattah 2008, a look back 12.26.08 @ 8:17 am