Wednesday, 25 November 2009

Essay of little or no significance #4: CDO²‎



Luis Buñuel, by Dalí, at the Reina Sofia.

I hope it didn’t escape your attention that my tongue-in-cheek tirade against art critics reflects my genuine views on the use of overly complex language in general.

Earlier this year I suggested to someone who had “been in the industry for 30 years”* that his client might benefit from simplifying its terms and conditions so that its customers would be able to understand them. He scoffed at the suggestion, which I thought was remarkable – galling, in fact – given that by then it was widely accepted that a key factor in the collapse of the global financial system was the complexity and opacity of the instruments that had until then sustained it.

See also: “Global Asset Backed Securitisation: Towards a New Dawn of Collateral Debt Obligations and Default Swap Derivatives – Synthesizing Syndicated Securities in the post-Lehman World”, Paul Colpitts (2009).

* (Tosser.)

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