It's Sunday and there's a hurricane coming...

[Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>]

--- begin forwarded text


Date: Sun, 20 Sep 1998 15:13:53 -0400 (AST)
From: Ian Grigg <iang@systemics.com>
To: dbs@philodox.com, e$@vmeng.com
Subject: It's Sunday and there's a hurricane coming...
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It's Sunday and there's a hurricane coming.  We're prepared
with the Pringles and Jamaican ginger beer, and are now just
watching the action on screen and out the window.

One of the things about living in the Financial Cryptography
Capital of the World is that occasionally we get visited by
The Powers That Be, and flattened in the process.

More nuisance than a TLA hate campaign, noisier than
professors' mailing list, and more water than a broken
pipe in a Cyber.  Hurricane Georges is coming to town.

The funny thing is that all along, or at least for many
years, we have known how to control hurricanes.  It was
inevitably one of those cold war US defence contracts, run
by the USAF.  There was some justification based on annoying
naval flotillas at sea, although it wasn't clear whether the
fly-boys were intending to annoy the USN or the Ruskies.
They kept the whole thing quiet, as nobody needs to know that
huge amounts of money can be saved and/or advancing armardas
can be sunk without using the other expensive toys developed
by the other programs.

Trials did occur, but the technology failed to make it into
the commercial market.  In order to hide the true potential,
the brass hats put a strict 56-miles limit on the application
for civilian purposes, thus revealing that you could only move
the beast around, you couldn't really tame it.

The real problem with the technology was that hurricanes still
wanted to go in roughly the same direction, and all one could
do was to pay the fee to the Air Force to get it moved 56 miles
up or down the coast.  Needless to say, the Generals were
surprised to receive competing bids for services in the first
live civilian hurricane.

After a lot of confusion and multiple contradictory bids being
accepted, the hurricane entered, destroyed, and left.  As did
the Generals, with the loot.  This misuse of what were now public
funds was considered sufficient to slap the exec order on the
whole deal, conveniently making illegal any class action suits
over the misused private funds.

Working on this problem for some time has led to a solution.
Using an anonymous cash protocol, we have built an Internet-based
solution for setting the market-driven price for a hurricane path.
Conveniently, we have also contracted delivery services from the
specialists, those very same Generals, who are now living in the
islands near here under assumed names and ranks.

Up until now, the whole idea was received with less than religous
fervour.  Either nobody believed we could do it, or the locals
were simply playing on island time.  Just as we were about to give
it up and retire to banana growing, Georges showed up and contracts
started winding in.

Market operators have a duty to track activity and ensure
that no insider trading occurs (those pesky Generals).  This
responsibility has expanded into advice for traders of attractive
opportunities for investment, either in the future positions
market or in our line of lamps, air-dropped generators, and
emergency supplies of Pringles.

We've also been able to track geographical trends for governmental
statistical purposes.  Georges was nominally slated to cross the
islands at Guadeloupe, but heavy market pressure backed by church
collections on thursday night purchased a shift north in track.
Getting in early was profitable for the Guadeloupians.

St Martins then bought heavily and shifted it back on a close
to due east track.   Unfortunately the French fluffed it last night
by downgrading their alert to a warning, so all the world knows now.

Antigua, being stuck in the middle, then bought in, backed up by
Monsterrat (who raised funds by threatening the Brits with another
thousand refugees).  Since then Georges has been yoyoing across the
map and the market has gone to hell in a hand basket.

The Generals had been raking in the delivery contracts, but have
posted an aircraft maintainance alert and tripled the premium.

Antiguan alternate government types, engaged in a power play
with their legal counterparts, have traded a mammoth contract to
have the hurricane move _towards_ them.  Unhappy at the Generals'
reluctance to fly, they've issued an options contract of another
kind on the market operators, that will be 'in the money' if their
other contract is not fulfilled.

Meanwhile, a catholic mama in the US virgin islands had a little
flutter on the market to help her more easterly daughter.

Failing to spot mama's anonymous currency transaction form, the IRS have
declared the area in general and hurricanes in particular to be a major
money laundering effort, and have a SWOT team flying in.  At least, the
men in black will fly in once they complete negotiations with the Generals,
who previously contracted all airports for the hurricane season, and
are prepared to deal in exchange for an amnesty for previous picadillos.

The market still goes strong, having at this stage traded 10% of
the GDP of the East Caribbean.  We're prepared for the long run,
with defense in depth by redundant UPS and generators, multiple IP
and interlocking 50 cal machine guns.  If only we could stop our
shareholders from killing each other, we could advance our plans
to open trading in Florida.

Phew.  This Jamaican ginger beer is strong stuff, and we're already
out of Pringles.  Oh, and there's a hurricane coming.


El Generalissimo.

--- end forwarded text


-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'