The price cubes are melting around the financial markets, and have been for several years. The nature of a synthetic is that its character is less likely to be known by anyone other than the author. A mortgage that is not “priced” at the origin will not be properly priced at any other transfer point. Instead of increasing certainty and lower risk we always discover that the synthetic financial product has less certainty and random unbounded risk. When you hear that the sub-prime shocks have not been fully felt because the write downs are not finished, haven’t you wondered how the millionaire wizards of wall street bought something without knowing its value? They don’t know it now, and say so, but when they bought it with your money, they seemed to think they had a value advantage. They did not know. They do not know. They never know.