Word: m
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...divisions at AIG that brought down the firm - financial products and stock-lending - didn't understand what they were doing. Financial products wrote credit-default swaps - sorry I'm not pausing to explain them, but most eyes would glaze over if I did - that they thought were riskless but turned out to be ultra-risky...
...stock-loan department, AIG's other disaster, took the cash it got for lending out stock owned by AIG and invested the money in esoteric securities rather than in risk-free Treasuries, the standard practice. The idea was - I'm not kidding - to make an extra one-fifth of 1% in interest. When the esoterica, which the stock-loan folks thought was riskless, crumbled, so did the firm. (See the worst business deals...
...That why the Pentagon has ordered more than 5,000 of the M-ATVs (called "baby MRAPs" by some) for its Afghanistan forces. These vehicles and their V-shaped hulls are designed to deflect the blasts of roadside bombs, which have become the Taliban's weapon of choice. Such improvised explosive devices killed only a single U.S. soldier in 2003 but have killed more than 100 so far this year, accounting for nearly half of the U.S. deaths...
...protection the vehicles offer them from roadside bombs. There are some 12,000 MRAPs in Iraq, and 3,600 of the original MRAPs in Afghanistan, up from almost none last year. The U.S. has spent nearly $30 billion on some 20,000 MRAPs, including $1.4 million each for the M-ATVs earmarked for Afghanistan. (See pictures of a photographer's experience...
...M-ATVs are being built in Wisconsin by Oshkosh Defense. Capable of carrying five soldiers (the original MRAPs carry between seven and 13), they're sent to South Carolina, where they're outfitted with communications and other government-supplied gear, before U.S. Air Force cargo planes deliver them on daily flights to Afghanistan. Eventually, they'll go more slowly, and cheaply, by sea. "We'll have them there no later than March," Mullen said of the 5,000 M-ATVs. "We recognize that is the principal threat...