Investors can find value if they pick and mix
Why all financial entities, including hedge funds, must be regulated
UNTIL RECENTLY, MOST of us thought financial debt was simply interposed between final borrowers and lenders, and of minor significance in itself. Thus the $2.7 trillion of mortgages (at September 2008 – down from the $3 trillion peak a year earlier) held in vehicles that had issued asset-backed securities were 20% of the 109% of GDP that is financial sector debt.
This seemed like a mere pass-through to the household mortgages held in the ABSs. It was not. The principal chain of potential grief in the banking system has been default on mortgages leading to reduced value of ABSs, knocking on to reduced values of the collateralized debt obligations that are themselves an assemblage of ABSs. Thus from the disastrous 2007 batches of CDOs, triple-A securities are now valued at about...
