"It was as if Pandora's box had been open [ed]" (Rubinstein interview): "we could shut our doors, but that wasn't going to stop anything" (O'Brien interview). LOR's principals did not envisage a catastrophic crash they assumed, as had Jacobs, that "savvy investors" (Jacobs 1999, p. 303) would step in to exploit and thus limit the mispricings induced by positive feedback but they suspected that market volatility could be increased. "If that's what people want to do [purchase portfolio insurance]," they thought, "then the market should be more volatile. There's nothing necessarily bad about it" (Rubinstein interview).

Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, loc. 813