Word: trillion
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...investment instruments have become so esoteric that only those who live in cyberspace can possibly fathom them. Since most of us inhabit the real world, we're fortunate that there are reporters who can alert us earthlings to the danger. Properly used, derivatives can lessen volatility. But $14 trillion floating around the world unaccounted for could lead to a financial meltdown. Congressional oversight is needed...
...trillion dollars in mortgages is now bound up in mortgage-backed securities, up from zero two decades ago. All told, there's a huge speculative overlay on stocks, bonds, mortgages, corn, hogs, etc., owned by regular people in the real world, which the derivative people refer to as "the underlying." These abstract concoctions are floating over the real world of stocks, bonds, corn and hogs in the same way that the island of Laputa, that fanciful domain of theorizers and stargazers, floated over real towns and villages in Gulliver's Travels...
...invest their money, Americans in recent years have taken their seats at Wall Street's big casino as never before. Fewer than seven years after the crash, 61% of small investors' money is riding on publicly traded securities, up from a 46% share in 1987. More than $1.3 trillion has flowed into mutual funds since the 1990s began, bringing the total to $2 trillion...
...which can affect the little guy's winnings. Much of the smart money is really riding on computer-generated, hypersophisticated financial instruments that use the public's massive bet on securities to create a parallel universe of side bets and speculative mutations so vast that the underlying $14 trillion involved is more than three times the total value of all stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange in a month and twice the size of the nation's gross domestic product. Collectively, these new financial instruments are called derivatives. Financially, they function like some giant unseen asteroid -- they influence...
Even as Congress mulls ways to reform the $1 trillion American health-care system, the nation's health sector, through the likes of Rick Scott, is rapidly reforming itself. Health inflation, for example, has slowed dramatically. Medical costs rose just 5.3% last year, the smallest increase in 20 years -- largely because enrollment in managed-care plans, which seek to curb wasteful treatment, is growing so quickly. More than half of all American workers are enrolled in such health plans, up from 27% in 1988. Most striking, more than a third of companies offering health benefits to their workers actually reduced...