Word: oiled
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...million of taxpayers' money last fall, instantly earning himself a place in Chilean infamy, by speculating in copper futures for the state-owned mining company. In Germany the giant conglomerate Metallgesellschaft dwarfed even those losses when it dropped $1.3 billion last year by betting the wrong way on oil-futures contracts. Only a last-minute bailout by the company's banks saved it from bankruptcy...
...rides on them. These side bets pull with them a real world of securities worth 30 times their value. Experts worried about the perils of such instruments have no trouble coming up with bleak scenarios. For instance, a utility company, trying to protect itself from an expected rise in oil prices, borrows lots of money to buy a derivative contract that will enable the firm to purchase oil in three months at current prices. But the price of oil goes down unexpectedly, and the utility is stuck with a commitment to buy oil at the higher price. That results...
This happened to the German metals and mining concern Metallgesellschaft last year after it charged into the derivatives market. The company bought oil futures for a subsidiary -- just before oil prices collapsed -- leaving it < with $1.3 billion in losses and triggering a national scandal. Prosecutors have been investigating the role of fired CEO Heinz Schimmelbusch, who has denied doing anything wrong. Nonetheless, bank creditors demanded the layoff of 7,500 ofMetallgesellschaft's 46,000 employees and the sale of several divisions as the price for rescuing the company...
...oil flows while the poor bear the brunt of the sanctions...
East and Southeast Asia these days are capitalism unbound, the "communist" world as America's Wild West, complete with its own snake-oil salesmen and robber barons. The People's Republic of China and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam have seen the Wild East, and they like what they...