Free Republic

"One Wall Street specialty during the boom was repackaging mortgage securities into instruments called collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, then selling slices of these with varying levels of risk. "For buyers of the slices who wanted to insure against the debt going bad, Wall Street offered another instrument, called credit-default swaps. Naturally, the riskier the debt that such a swap "insured," the more the swap would cost. And this price would go up if default risk appeared to be increasing. This meant an investor of a bearish bent could buy the swaps as a way to bet on bad news...

Domain Name Loss For BossMarcella Bernhard, Forbes.com, 02.08.01, 10:20 AM ETNEW YORK - Bruce Springsteen is famous for being "Born in the U.S.A.," but in cyberspace his name belongs to a Canadian.The New Jersey rocker yesterday lost his bid for rights to the domain name Brucespringsteen.com, which is currently controlled by Jeff Burgar, an Internet consultant from Alberta, Canada. The case is bad news for celebrities who are anxious to maintain control of their online identities.Springsteen failed to convince a United Nations arbitration panel that Burgar is using his name for profit or ill will, and Burgar demonstrated that he ...

Some editorial poetry:Little Al Goron,He sat like a moron,Eating his SCOFLA pie.With his thumb he pushed hard,A chad fell from the cardHe said: My what a good boy am I!(Apologies to Mother Goose)And another:Divining IntentNon-Votes were gone votes in bygone days,But Goron the Moron won't have it that way,Divining intent from the shade of a dent,He'll tell us he won and now give up our guns.This grinch will make deals with a devilish sort,Treaties with Greenies, sell America short,He'll drink tea 'til he pees so he won't be around,No legal authority controls in his town.