* ISDA had been created back in 1986, by my bosses at Salomon Brothers, to deal with the immediate problem of an innovation called an interest rate swap. What seemed like a simple trade to the people doing it--I pay you a fixed rate of interest in exchange for your paying me a floating rate--wound up needing a blizzard of rules to govern it. Beneath the rules was the simple fear that the party on the other side of a Wall Street firm's interest rate swap might go bust and fail to pay off its bets. The interest rate swap, like the credit default swap, exposed Wall Street firms to other people's credit, and other people to the credit of Wall Street firms, in new ways.