Markets

Don't Blame the Quants

By Jessica Stillman

Updated on: September 30, 2008 / 3:39 PM EDT / MoneyWatch

The Find: An impassioned defense of the "quants" who have taken much of the blame for the financial crisis.
The Source: A post by Jack R. Anderson Professor of Business at the Columbia Business School on its Public Offering blog.

The Takeaway: In much of the press coverage of the current market turmoil, Anderson points out, "arcane" and "dizzyingly complex" derivatives have come in for scorn, as have the math whizzes -- often known as quants -- behind these innovations. He also notes, however, that just a few months ago a joint report by New York Senator Charles Schumer and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg insisted that "New York needs to expand its supply of quantitative talent to keep up with global competition."

So who's right? The Bloomberg/Schumer report or the panicked press? Anderson says the government had it correct:

Risk management needs to be at least as sophisticated as the trading it monitors. Financial intermediaries are modern factories, producing products to manage and transfer risk. Yes, we need new measures to guard against toxic waste, but we especially need people who understand the machinery.

Rather than pointing the finger at the pointy heads, whose skills will again undoubtedly be at the heart of any post-calamity financial system, the more effective strategy to clean up the mess may be to blame bad data. This is the argument of wise voices ranging from Thomas C. Redman on the Harvard Business Conversation Starter to BNET's Sean Silverthorne.

(Image of some serious math getting solved by A.A., CC 2.0)
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This post first appeared on BNET1.