Who Is Who in the World of Financial ‘Swaps’ and Special Purpose Entities

The title of a German war novel — rather a magazine series — did encapsulate the arch-ethical distinction between the means and the end as it emerged from the debacle of the Third Reich: ‘Und keiner wusste warum’ (‘And nobody knew why’). The Enron financial rout, although different in magnitude — only the French would dare comment that no loss of money is lethal — will fascinate scholars because it has revealed that the ‘invisible hand’, which is meant to bring rationality into the market forces, may have no shadow, like the character of another German novel who had sold his own shadow to the devil — thinking it was of little value until it made him a monster banned from any human society.