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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Les H who wrote (112174)	3/22/2008 6:12:04 PM
From: marcher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

"...Bear Stearns held credit default swap contracts carrying an outstanding value of $2.5 trillion...The rescue was...100 percent related to credit default swaps.” ok, next.

To: Les H who wrote (112174)	3/23/2008 6:56:49 AM
From: saveslivesbyday	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

Re: "What created this monster?" - Recommended reading for all. "...... with profit margins shrinking in traditional businesses like underwriting and trading, Wall Street firms rushed into the new frontier of lucrative financial products like derivatives. Students with doctorates in physics and other mathematical disciplines were hired directly out of graduate school to design them, and Wall Street firms increasingly made big bets on derivatives linked to mortgages and other products." Terrific, so physics Ph.D's set up the models they're using for trading derivatives, And nobody else can even understand them, And anyone is surprised that nobody knows exactly "what's on the books?"