I’m getting pretty annoyed at the calumny heaped upon “complexity.”  Everyone wants to “hit the ball down the middle of the fairway”; “keep it simple, stupid”;  “Stick to the knitting…”; “Plain vanilla only, please.”  Don’t do anything not in the precedent.  Oh, please.  Okay, I’ll admit I’m talking my book here, but this is an inapposite choice of chief villain for the little morality play called “What Went Wrong.” 

There were plenty of dumb things done in the capital markets before the Late Unpleasantness.  There were indeed some deals and structures that could not be easily understood.  There were some bad choices made about, shall we call them, “opportunities” presented by the application of super complex rating criteria.  Then, of course, complex machinery was sometimes left in the hands of those ill equipped to manage it. 
Continue Reading Complexity Is Not The Enemy