Nor am I swayed by the usual argume

Nor am I swayed by the usual argument that the VAR's widespread use by financial institutions should give it a measure of scientific credibility. Banks have the ingrained habit of plunging headlong into mistakes together where blame-minimizing managers appear to feel comfortable making blunders so long as their competitors are making the same ones. The state of the Japanese and French banking systems, the stories of lending to Latin America, the chronic real estate booms and busts, and the S&L debacle provide us with an interesting cycle of communal irrationality. I believe that the VAR is the alibi bankers will give shareholders (and the bailing-out taxpayer) to show documented due diligence, and will express that their blow-up came from truly unforeseeable circumstances and events with low probability-not from taking large risks they did not understand. But my sense of social responsibility will force me to point my finger menacingly. I maintain that the due-diligence VAR tool encourages untrained people to take misdirected risk with shareholders', and ultimately the taxpayers', money.