The global financial crisis and employment relations

Abstract

[Extract] In an expensively decorated office high above Wall Street, financier Charles Smith sat down to read all the documentation surrounding the 'CDO squared' (CD02) he was about to purchase. The CD02 was a privately issued bond; the underlying assets backing it were a multitude of collateralized debt obligations, (CDOs) - bonds issued against mixed pools of assets, mostly loans. Each of the underlying CDOs was 200 pages long, so in order to understand the CD02, worth many millions of dollars, Mr Smith had to read through 1.1 billion pages of text associated with 94 million mortgages and other instruments within that CDO'- He sat with his coffee and commenced reading on 2 January 2008, and with meal and coffee breaks had finished by 7 August 2863. This, of course, is a fictional story - because no one ever read all the documentation associated with a CD02.