Word: interesting
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Broadway since 1980 - gave me the rare opportunity of encountering an American musical classic in the way, by rights, every show ought to be encountered: as if for the first time. No memories of the original to protect - or, conversely, any need for a radical reinvention to renew my interest. No, I came to West Side Story simply to find out whether, in 2009, the show still entertains, excites, lives up to its gargantuan reputation. And my verdict, alas, is: Not quite...
Before 1970, banks were content to make loans to consumers and business which remained on their books, collecting interest until the principal on the loan was satisfied. This approach made for a relatively illiquid market for the buying and selling of loans. Accordingly, this system insured that lenders were unable to sell their loan portfolios easily. Market illiquidity exposed the lender to the risk that individual loans would default or that rising interest rates would force the lender's interest cost higher than its income on the individual loan...
...Backed Securities ("MBS"), a species of ABS, became toxic following the collapse of the housing market. Like all ABS, MBS derive their value from underlying loans, in this case, mortgages. A large group of mortgages provides the payment stream to the holders of ABS in the form of individual interest and principal payments made by a borrower to the bank...
...Without other credit enhancement techniques, tranches are rated differently because each one is paid sequentially, with interest and principal payments on the underlying loans first going to the senior most tranche and the last payments going to the most junior. Effectively, the tranches are, at least in part, rated differently based upon the order in which they receive payment from the underlying loans. In the event of default, the junior most tranche may receive less than their regular return because they are the last tranche to be paid. In order to compensate for the increased risk, the more junior...
...Another problem - increasingly - is conflict of interest. As pharmaceutical companies fund more of their own trials, the studies may be designed to yield the sunniest results possible. Allowing a new drug to shadow-box against a placebo, for instance, promises more marketable results than pitting it against a competing drug that's already on the market. Publicizing only surrogate outcomes without mentioning whether the patient benefits in any substantive way is another common drug company dodge. So is burying - or at least minimizing - side effects or other shortcomings...