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Josse Jeremy. Dinosaur Derivatives and Other Trades
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. What is Value? Dinosaur Derivatives
2. What is Uncertainty? Joseph's Dreams
3. What is a Contract? 2,4,6,8 …
4. What is a Financial Instrument? A Legal Fiction
5. What is Financial Innovation? Railroads and the Credit Crisis
6. What is Ownership? Faust
7. What is Money? Cyber Cash
8. What is Taxation? Better than Theft
9. What is Fraud? When We Meet the Bad
10. What is Regulation? Antique Maps
11. What is a Bankrupt? A Financial Institution
Epilogue
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Dinosaur Derivatives and Other Trades
Jeremy Josse
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Then I want to move on to the anxiety we feel when confronting a financial problem – a feeling that results from what we call “doubt” or “risk.” We can never be quite sure whether things may, or may not, turn out in the way contemplated when undertaking a particular financial exercise, or calculation, or plan, or investment.
A better word than “doubt” is “uncertainty.” And this is where finance and philosophy really converge. Volumes have been written, in the great pantheon of philosophy, on the question of how we can be certain of anything. (My “chair problem,” for instance: how can I really be certain my chair exists, even though I can feel it supporting my backside?) In finance we are plagued with uncertainty, and it's no abstraction. While philosophers and academicians may write at length on the topic of certainty without disrupting the general ebb and flow of goods and services, those actually involved in finance know all too well how uncertainty creates real-life events, including catastrophic economic collapses affecting whole societies worldwide.
