#47 Go Forth! TLAC Fleet

— Dedicated to the Rearguards of the Future

Across the seven seas we sail,
A mighty fleet competes with the world.

The flagship leads—our holding company,
Commander and supply base.

Lined up behind, our battleships:
Core subsidiaries in formation.
Pipes connect them to the flagship,
Always ready to supply.

To guard the stability of society,
We won't let a single ship go down.

If one ship falls into distress,
Emergency aid is triggered—
Lifeblood flows through the pipes
From flagship to friend, without delay.

But if the flagship faces doom,
She docks in the harbor of resolution,
Entrusts her key ships to public care,
And offers what remains—her last reserves—
To us who stay behind.

Then, with her duty fulfilled,
The flagship gently sinks beneath the sea.

To preserve the order,
The resolution begins—
The final mission of the rearguards.

Afterword

This poem is a metaphorical rendering of the concept behind TLAC—Total Loss-Absorbing Capacity, a global financial framework designed to ensure an orderly resolution in the event of a major institutional failure.

The flagship leading a vast fleet (the holding company),
The battleships that follow (core subsidiaries),
The pipes through which support flows (internal funding channels)—
I traced the architecture of this system into verse as faithfully as I could.

But what I ultimately wanted to depict
were the people who continue working, calmly and deliberately,
until the very last moment of the flagship’s life.

In the face of collapse,
there are those who neither flee nor panic—
but who take on responsibility, assess risks, transfer capital,
and execute the final operations in silence,
in places no one can see.

This poem is dedicated to those future rearguards—
the ones who will one day, perhaps, shoulder this role.

And if that day should come for you,
may these words serve quietly by your side—
a small talisman for your task.

If a system can become poetry,
it is only because there are people living within it.