[November 2010]

The difference with a Mutual Fund is that the price of the underlying assets is known, and all public info is known, and the assets themselves are known. If the assets themselves (the morgages) aren’t public knowledge, and Citi didn’t pass along the price difference to the buyer, but just increased their margin, it seems fraudulent to me.

[Alberta's Child]

Valid point, but the only difference, really, is that SEC regulations related to publicly-traded stocks are so comprehensive that the price of the underlying assets is known. There's no such comparable set of regulations when it comes to bonds, and even fewer regulations in place when it comes to these kinds of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) that didn't even exist a few decades ago.