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SUPER SENIOR….Felix Salmon explains the synthetic CDO market:

Let’s start with a simple single-credit synthetic bond….

[Explanation follows, ending with a little bit about the size of the synthetic mortgage backed security market.]

….In fact, most of the synthetic MBS issued were issued by banks which kept the underlying mortgages on their own balance sheet. Rather than put the mortgages directly into a CDO and sell that to investors, they kept the mortgages themselves and bought protection from the CDO. Why did they do that? That’s the story of the super-senior tranche, and will have to wait for another day.

What!?! For pity’s sake, man, don’t keep us in suspense. I want to hear about the super-senior tranche. It’s one of those things that I think I understand in a technical sense — sort of the way a blind man understands a sunset — but not in the real-world sense of what people were doing with them and how they got abused so badly. So let’s hear it!

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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