Loyola University Business Professor John R. Boatright takes a look at the complex phenomenon of risk management and some of the ethical issues associated with it. Although people have tried to manage risk for millennia, significant changes occurred in the mid-1990s that transformed risk management into a science that now guides much financial and business decision making. A product of sophisticated mathematical models made possible by powerful information technologies, today's risk management tools have created exotic securities and new markets that reduce some risks and increase others. Many critics have argued that there are important technical and ethical problems associated with these practices and that they may have significantly contributed to the Great Recession of 2007.