Oh, irony of ironies

The financial wizards, in their delusional attempt to kill off the last bit of Risk by creating credit default swaps for everything, have now totally succeeded in making Risk maximal for every single financial endeavor!
No one trusts anyone. No one will lend to anyone. So now everyone is at maximal risk and companies that were doing just fine may suddenly die because they cannot get short term loans. Airlines are now finding that no one will allow them to hedge for oil price fluctuations for 2009, so now they have one less tool to avoid bankruptcy.

A vast caravan of mathematical models, wandering across the landscape, in search of an idea...

Sounds like the people who wanted to make it morning in American but wound up making the evening come sooner.

Sounds like the people who wanted to make us safer but wound up destroying our security.

Sounds like the people who wanted to secure our hegemony but wound up having everything slip through our fingers.


Way to go.


I think they should all have read Oedipus more carefully.

Oedipus was the son of Laius and Jocasta. Before his birth, it was prophesied that he would kill his father and marry his mother. To avoid this fate, the child was given to a herdsman who was told to kill him. The herdsman, out of pity, and yet fearing to disobey, instead gave him to another herdsman. The second herdsman took the infant Oedipus to his master, the king of Corinth, Polybus, who adopted him as his own son. Oedipus then lived as the crown prince of Corinth. Many years later, Oedipus is told that he is not the real son of Polybus and, to confirm this, he seeks help from an Oracle and is told that he is destined to kill his father and mate with his mother. In his attempt to evade the dictates of the Oracle, he decides to flee from home to Thebes, on the other side of the mountains.

As Oedipus was travelling by horse to Thebes, he came to a crossroads where he met a chariot driven by Laius. A dispute arose and Oedipus killed Laius. Continuing his journey, Oedipus encountered a Sphinx, who stopped any traveler and asked him a riddle that no one had yet been able to solve. If the traveler failed, he was eaten by the Sphinx. The riddle was: "What walks on four feet in the morning, two in the afternoon and three at night?". The answer was: "Man; as an infant, he crawls on all fours, as an adult, he walks on two legs and, in old age, he relies on a walking stick". Oedipus solved the riddle and the Sphinx threw herself to her death. The gratitude of the Thebans led them to appoint Oedipus as their king. Oedipus was also given the recent widow Jocasta as his wife, and they had four children.
Many years after the marriage of Oedipus and Jocasta, a plague struck the city of Thebes. Oedipus, with his typical hubris, asserted that he could, and would, end the plague. He sent Creon, Jocasta's brother, to the Oracle at Delphi and found that the murderer of the former King Laius must be found and killed or exiled. In a search for the identity of the killer, Oedipus sends for the blind prophet, Tiresias, who warns him not to try to find the killer. In an angry exchange, Tiresias tells Oedipus that he is the killer and suggests that he is living in shame and does not know who his true parents are. Undaunted, Oedipus continues his search. When a messenger arrives from Corinth with the news that King Polybus is dead, Oedipus, still regarding Polybus as his true father, worries about the part of the prophecy that dictates he will mate with his own mother. The messenger reassures him with the news that he is adopted. Jocasta then realizes who Oedipus is and goes into the palace to kill herself. Oedipus seeks verification of the messenger's story from the very same herdsman who was to have left Oedipus to die as a baby. From that herdsman, Oedipus learns that the infant raised as the adopted son of Polybus and Merope was the son of Laius and Jocasta. Thus, Oedipus finally realizes that he had killed his own father, King Laius, at the crossroads, and as consequence, had married his own mother, Jocasta.
Oedipus goes in search of Jocasta and finds she has killed herself.