Wired tracks down the actual mathematical formula used by the investment bankers and credit rating agencies to wreck the economy.

Maybe it’s unfair to blame David X. Li, who did warn that his formula was being used inappropriately. (On the other hand, he did say it was “better than nothing”, which seems not to have been the case.) Probably if the Gaussian copula function did not exist, the whiz kids would have found something else.