Re: An essay on economic basis of bourgeois risk and gambling culture - parasitism as derivatives, options, swaps, hedge funds etc.

[Sabri Oncu <soncu@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I said:

> Marvin:
>
> > "maybe they work for hedging purposes,
> > but they still represent a potential source
> > of catastrophic instability".
>
> No! This was not my point.

By the way, it happens that I was the last "product
manager" of the Leland-Rubinstein portfolio insurance
program. It died in my hands in 1999 because I had
only two clients, one here in San Francisco, the other
in Sydney, Australia. It was an APL (A Programming
Language) program which was not Y2K compliant, and
given two clients and the fact that it was almost
impossible to find APL programmers in those days, I
cut the diskette that contained the source code with a
pair of scissors myself to put it to death.

According to some, it was this "hedging" program that
caused the 1987 stock market crash.

Debatable of course but still.

So much for hedging!..

Sabri