So isn't Abu Dhabi the largest Citigroup shareholder? Just wondering. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=avb.Jr9Shn5I&refer=home
Also, if anyone cares, Phase 2 of the economic crisis is coming. Here's why: CDOs, CDSs. Here's what happened (buckle up): 1.) Loan originators lent money to people (car, home, cc, et al) 2.) LOs sold the loans to banks 3.) Banks broke them up into securities and sold the securities Credit rating agencies, paid by the banks, rated those securities AAA (solid) to BBB (junk) Every month when the consumers make payments including interest, that money flows into the securities. If a consumer doesn't pay, then the BBB security stops paying first. In exchange for that risk the BBB buyer gets a higher interest rate than the AAA buyer. So far so good. But nothing is stopping, say, Citigroup from buying a bunch of BBB bonds and making their own AAA to BBB product. You as the buyer of the AAA, if you only looked at the rating, would have no idea that it's REALLY a AAA based on pile of BBBs. To you all AAA look alike; but they're not. That's problem #1. Now let's say a hedge fund buys a bunch AAA bonds from Citigroup (which are based on BBBs) and decides to insure their purchase through a "swap" with AIG. If AIG isn't smart enough to realize that they're insuring a bunch of AAA that are really based on BBB ... well they've got a lot of exposure. That's problem #2. When the credit rating agencies started wising up to how much exposure AIG had they downgraded THEIR credit rating. That triggered a collateral call for AIG (to prove it could pay it's swaps) and it went bankrupt. So the government steps in and helps them make their collateral call as well as a bunch of other folk that had no clue what they were doing. Ok, so how does the government clean things up? Since insurance on a bond promises to pay the bond if there's trouble (just like your car insurance promises to pay for your car if there's an accident), the gov't could just find all of swaps that AIG holds, buy the underlying bonds, and cancel the swaps right? In other words, your insurance company could buy your car from you and cancel your insurance. Wrong. See the beauty of swaps is that you can buy insurance on a bond even if you don't own the bond! In other words, Erika can buy insurance on tBone's car just because she thinks he drives like a maniac and is bound to crash it up. If he does, Erika's swap says she's owed the value to repair or replace the car. And so does tBone's. And that's problem #3. So how do you clean THAT up? No clue. And in the meantime the crisis is spreading to every corner of the globe. Get ready for phase 2. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;207172674;29440083;f Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:281240 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
