[-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 51, Issue 22

[John Haber]

 >>So interesting, yes, indeed the same affliction occurred on Wall 
Street, that a correlation calculation could be presumed to be real, and 
of course the converse, at the same time, that the real didn't matter.

Thanks, but let me add one more dimension.  An artist or critic 
knowingly creates a correlation -- an analogy or metaphor -- in hope of 
insight or illumination.  It's easy to fool ourselves into thinking we 
don't create it, but that's from a good thing:  the insight or 
illumination is more important, we feel, that our ego (unless you're 
Harold Bloom). 

But the broker isn't quite analogous.  The broker here creates the 
correlation, took, by restricting the mathematical model to new 
instruments.  They only went up, because they didn't exist before.  But 
there it's different:  it's mistaking greed for insight. 

John