Word: bondses
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Here's how Strata worked: The original investment (made by hedge funds or other big investors) was $20 million, plus a fee paid to the underwriter, Bank of America, for structuring the bond. Bank of America then took the $20 million and bought some liquid, safe asset, such as Treasury...
And now comes the messy part. Bank of America used Strata's collateral as the backing against which it could write credit default swaps (CDS), that is, insurance contracts based on whether some other bonds get paid back. As a writer, or seller, of CDS contracts, Strata investors get a...
Here's the catch: If the bonds Strata insured against go bad, Strata is on the hook for the losses. And in a twist on regular insurance, the buyer of a CDS contract [i.e., the insured] doesn't actually have to own the bond. If the bond goes belly up...
But wait, there's more. Unlike other CDOs, Strata is a so-called single tranche CDO. Most CDOs own hundreds of millions of dollars of loans. Those loans are pooled together and then various bonds are sold based on the portfolio. But all the bonds are not the same. They...
But in Strata's case there is no stack. Instead, BofA imagined it had invested $1 billion in the bonds of 75 different companies, and then pretended that Strata wrote insurance against a $20 billion slice. BofA bankers placed Strata toward the bottom, in order to justify its relatively high...