{"paper":{"title":"Constant Proportion Debt Obligations, Zeno's Paradox, and the Spectacular Financial Crisis of 2008","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["q-fin.GN"],"primary_cat":"q-fin.MF","authors_text":"Donald Richards, Hein Hundal","submitted_at":"2018-04-02T23:56:14Z","abstract_excerpt":"We study a coin-tossing model used by a ratings agency to justify the sale of constant proportion debt obligations (CPDOs), and prove that it was impossible for CPDOs to achieve in a finite lifetime the Cash-In event of doubling its capital. In the best-case scenario of a two-headed coin, we show that the goal of attaining the Cash-In event in a finite lifetime is precisely the goal, described more than two thousand years ago in Zeno's Paradox of the Dichotomy, of obtaining the sum of an infinite geometric series with only a finite number of terms. In the worst-case scenario of a two-tailed co"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"1804.00764","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}