I know why Lehmans crashed

I want to read this book. It's written by a neuroscientist and it's a collection of short stories about the afterlife. It must be weird. I'm going to swing by the bookshop on the way home if I get time. Actually, I have to finish The Greatest Show on Earth before I start my next book. I may try and order it online actually.

Apparently it's been one year since the Lehman's collapse. I had to sit through a lecture from George at work about why it happened. George has a doctorate in maths from Oxford and specialises in mathematical modelling of credit risk. He is fabulously clever, and probably right. He's difficult to get on with though. Actually, I quite like him. I don't think he feels threatened by me. He says the Lehman's collapse was all down to credit derivatives and the fact that the people dealing them didn't understand them. He tried to explain derivatives to me once, but I don't really understand.

There are also things called credit default swaps which apparently played a part. They are much easier to understand. It's like an insurance policy against a client defaulting on a credit deal. But there are some cases where your CDS reward for a client default is preferable to them not defaulting, so it would seem that in some cases these products mean that it is beneficial for a bank to let a client go bust. That's what George says anyway.

Patrick Swazye appears to have died today. I suppose that's sad. He was only 57. That would be 15 years older than me. If I died a the same age, my son would be 18. Nothing like a celebrity death to bring one's own mortality into focus. Keith Floyd has also fried his final omelette it seems. He was 65, same age as my mother. Not very old really. He lived fast though I think. He's been looking old for a long time.

Update: I tried to order the David Eagleman book online, but they seem to be out of stock and waiting for a reprint. There is a handy function on the web page however that lets me see if there are any copies in my local shop, and there are apparently. So I rushed home to get to the bookshop before it closed. They confirmed that they do have a single copy, but they couldn't find it. Damn!