主题：闲话风险之风险的古典定义 -- 厚坤

Mr Viniar was the one who convened the now famous meeting on December 14 2006, in which senior members of the mortgage trading desk, the risk department, the controller’s office and others gathered to discuss the US housing market. They decided that it was time to put hedging strategies in place to prepare for a housing downturn given information from the controller’s office and early losses showing up in Goldman’s mortgage book. The call to hedge was a collective one, but as one senior executive put it: “If it hadn’t been for [Mr Viniar], it probably wouldn’t have happened.”

The hedging worked in fits and starts and eventually produced a profit in the third quarter and left Goldman with a net short position against the mortgage market, a fact Mr Viniar took the rare step of acknowledging when the bank announced earnings.