We have now talked about enough different forms of risk that the relationships between risk and change should be clearer. In psychological terms, the word change tends to have positive connotations, and the word risk of course has negative connotations.
But they are much the same thing. Some kinds of change are statistically predictable and hence manageable. People are born, work, retire, and die. Their activities—whether they are inventors or thieves—affect the lives of others. Their presence or absence creates myriad opportunities and threats, and adjusting to these changes creates both opportunities for gain and some dangers. In addition to the activities of individuals, new combinations of circumstance for gain or loss arise constantly owing to the activities of markets and institutions.
Each day brings new prices for securities and new values for currencies and commodities. Other events blow through the global economy with some regularity: hurricanes, election surprises and coups, strikes, earthquakes, terrorist attacks, transportation accidents, and so forth. Conventional risk-management tools seek to minimize the hazards and perils; in a global economy with massive financial resources, a lot can be done and a lot is done.