Friday, December 28, 2007

Anatomy of a CDO

The Wall Street Journal provides a grisly visual dissection of a subprime mortgage package - thanks to The Contrarian Investor for the lead.

If I follow correctly, the trickery seems to come in step 4, where a CDO largely composed of middling-rated mortgage risk sells bits of itself with unreasonably optimistic ratings attached. "Skimmed milk masquerades as cream".

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

For those who enjoy reading, we recommend this article from Platinum Asset Management.

Sackerson said...

Thanks - the first page of that article has a bit on regulation Q that relates nicely to our £100-billion Northern Rock debacle:

"Just imagine running a bank when your assets are long-dated mortgages yielding seven percent while your deposit costs rise to twelve percent"

... I shall read on!