The basis for this claim was that the assets to be purchased were “common,” or objectively, valued. According to conventional theory, one should expect in such cases that purchasers of such assets should find themselves misjudging this objective value, resulting in a kind of undesirable behavior called the “winner’s curse.” Market designers believed they could mitigate such problems by designing markets that efficiently aggregate information, and thereby assist market participants to discover the true value of items being sold. … In circumstances like these, with the largest financial firms in the nation perched on the precipice of default, the stakes were dangerously high, making their participation all the more crucial.

Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis …, loc. 857