Word: cds
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...credit default swap is an insurance policy on an investment. Wall Street took out insurance on risky investments, like taking insurance out on your car. The party that issues the CDS agrees to insure an investment in the event of a loss, and, in return, the CDS buyer agrees to pay a monthly premium. However, a CDS is not your average insurance policy. Insurance is highly regulated, and CDSs are unregulated, creating many dangers...
...insurer must set aside some money, called collateral, that proves that it can make some payoff when needed. There was often little or no collateral required for CDSs. The obvious problem is that in an unforeseen catastrophe, the insurer may not be able to honor its commitment. Therefore, the CDS buyer must totally trust that the issuer is good for the money...
...cash payments to CDS [credit-default swap] counterparties should never have occurred," Greenberg told a House oversight committee. Greenberg is not alone is raising questions about profits that financial firms have been making on the unwinding of AIG's derivative bets. Last week New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo said he was looking into AIG's trading records to examine whether the payments the company made to other financial firms were improper. (Read "How to Know When the Economy Is Turning...
...Last month AIG said it had paid out about $50 billion to various financial firms to which it had sold credit-default swaps, which are insurance contracts sold to bond investors and others. When a bond defaults, a holder of a CDS has the right to be reimbursed for the loss by the seller of the contract. AIG was one of the largest sellers of such contracts. Much of the credit insurance AIG sold was on mortgage bonds, which are backed by home loans. As more and more homeowners defaulted, many of those bonds plummeted in value, causing the holders...
...unclear how the payments AIG made to other financial firms could be clawed back. Unlike stocks, CDS contracts don't trade on an exchange. And trading partners can unwind those contracts at any prices they like. What's more, a rule change in late February, to which AIG voluntarily agreed, gives the insurer's trading partners more leeway to name their terms in the cases of bond defaults that trigger CDS payments...