Tuesday 3 March 2009

Island Tameness

Insuring the survival of the things we are most afraid of flies in the face of human reason.  The introduction of credit default swaps to our world economy may have a parallel in the ecological world, in the theories which abound on the topic of ecological naivete.  The "animals without predators have no fear" problem.  But can animals learn fear?  Studies show that they can.  But not fast enough.  So, what prevents a Dodo event?  Either isolating these species onto their own island, or, eradicating the predator.  

So.  The isolated island thing would be loosely in keeping with the bad bank proposals when it comes to credit default swaps.  Or, can they be killed off?  It is a faulty analogy (and reversed) because credit default swaps do have predators.  But, the predators are human.  Or algorithms. Or, it is all vice-versa.  So then, what to do with a naive predator whose prey is also the predator?  Now we are on an island of tangled snakes eating their own tails as the logic circles and entwines.  Apologies.

Perhaps the CDS market can evolve so it stops engineering its own demise.  Fast evolution is something that can be done to financial products faster than evolution in the scientific world. World events have just shown this to be true.

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