The first modern derivatives exchange was named as a homage to Melamed’s Bundist father

Evidence

Had it not been for the escape route offered by Sugihara’s letter of transit, Melamed’s parents would have joined the Bundist partisans in the forests of Lithuania in armed resistance: it was, for example, members of the Bund who led the heroic, doomed uprising of the Warsaw ghetto in April 1943. Melamed disavowed his parents’ socialism “Adam Smith taught me that you serve society best by caring for yourself” (Melamed interview) but he never abandoned their sense of the moral demands of the collective. … “My father had instilled in me [the] idea that you gain immortality by tying yourself up with an idea, or a movement, or an institution that transcends mortality” (Melamed interview). The very name of the world’s first successful modern financial derivatives exchange, the Merc’s “International Monetary Market,” was a private homage to a socialist. It shared its initials with Melamed’s father, Isaac Moishe Melamdovich. — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 675

Categorization

• CANDY: The IMM acronym literally spells Melamed’s father’s initials — a fun, tweetable financial history tidbit.
• SHARE: Worth sending to anyone who loves Chicago Mercantile Exchange lore or the intersection of finance and immigrant socialist history.