The philosophy of EMU, one of promoting stability and accordingly diminishing risks, is a powerful one, but I'd like to set it in a context of human desire and history. In the financial world, risk, reward and catastrophe are cycles repeated by every generation. Greed, hubris and systemic fluctuations have given us the South Sea Bubble, Barings, Bre-X, Tulip Mania, to name just a few of the thousands of ready examples. Those of you who buy Dutch bulbs, perhaps you will pick some up at the airport, might flinch from the highest price ever paid for a bulb at the height of Tulip Mania in the autumn of 1636. In today's prices, a single bulb was sold for over thirty five thousand dollars.
Speculation can degenerate into craze.
Love might be blind, but greed is deaf. In March this year, Bre-X, the Canadian exploration company, touted its gold find in Indonesia as the world's biggest potential gold mine. Geological reports appeared to confirm the hype. Bre-X rose in value to over four point four billion Canadian dollars. It's relevant because it forms part of the typically unquantified risk arena in which you all operate.