Comment by tech_ken

>that was no small amount of work.

It definitely shows, thank you for publishing it freely

>The purpose of financial markets, sometimes but not always wholly achieved, is to transfer risks to those best able to hold them.

This makes a sense to me, thanks for explaining. I can definitely understand how insurance collectivizes and smooths individual risks, and from this and other examples I can see why a lending institution might seek something similar to enable them to keep cash moving. It does seem a little epicyclic to me that a farmer faces a glut as a result of organizing food production through a market economy, and then we resort to like a second-order market trick to resolve that problem. Presumably it would be simpler to just dump all the food in the middle of the table and then hand it out evenly, but I've heard this runs into its own set of difficulties.

>Let me also mention that I am the author of the definitive reference book on old Vintage Port: Port Vintages

Very welcomed, I may not buy the book but I will definitely go buy some port. TGIF!