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by pgwhalen 2195 days ago
Bingo. Finance is just about allocating risk. When it goes wrong, it's either because 1) the risk taken was misunderstood, and/or 2) too much risk was taken.

Fraud falls into category 1 (as do many other things, like correlation of loan defaults), and leverage into category 2.

The mechanisms by which risk is allocated are generally quite simple.