Special Investment Vehicle, or SIV, is accurately defined in this blog post by Bill Fleckenstein.
They were devised as a way to conceal risk from regulators, investors, anyone actually.
Being “special”, as in the recurring comment of the Church Lady on Saturday Night Live: “Isn’t that special?” they were not on the books.
So, banks could conceal their financial condition. Which they continue to do.
That is why Congress has no answers as to what was done with all the TARP money that was supposed to rescue those too big to fail institutions.
They held onto the money, for the most part, as only they have an idea how bad their balance sheets actually are.
The SIVs were used to hold risky mortgage backed securities, which collapsed in value with the mortgage crisis.
That brought the banks to their knees, begging in Washington, where our civil servants cheerfully have pledged trillions of dollars, so far, to bail them out for their greed inspired fraud.
A fraction of that money should have been used to beef up the Justice Department to indict the scoundrels.
Special Investment Vehicle
Popularity: 2% [?]
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
