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  • Let's say that I'm a pension fund, and I have money to lend

  • to other people.

  • And I want to lend it to other people, because that way I can

  • get interest on it instead of it just kind of sitting and

  • doing nothing.

  • And if I lend it to someone other than the government,

  • I'll get better interest. So let's say that there's-- so

  • let me draw me, I'm the pension fund.

  • Maybe I'll drawn me in magenta.

  • So that's me, pension fund.

  • And let's say that there's some corporation,

  • let's say it's GM.

  • They make cars.

  • I think you've heard of them.

  • Some corporation, GM.

  • Let's just call it Corporation A.

  • They need to borrow money, maybe to buy a factory or to

  • do something else, we're not going to get involved in what

  • they need the money for.

  • And I'd like to lend them the money.

  • But there's an issue here.

  • I am a pension fund.

  • I manage the retirement fund for the teachers of

  • California, or for the auto workers of

  • Michigan, or whatever.

  • And part of my charter says that I can only invest in

  • very, very, very safe instruments.

  • So I'm not allowed to go gamble people's money, because

  • this is people's retirement.

  • So I can't do very fancy things with it.

  • I can only invest in things that are rated AAA,

  • or let's say AA.

  • I'm just kind of making this up on the fly.

  • So AAA would be like the highest

  • rated securities, right?

  • These are things that have a very low chance of default.

  • But Corporation A is only rated, I don't know, let's say

  • it's rated BB.

  • And actually, this is a good time to think about well who

  • is doing all these ratings.

  • And you might think, oh, it surely is a government entity,

  • because only the government would be objective enough give

  • all of these corporations frankly objective ratings.

  • But unfortunately, it's not.

  • They're private entities, that are actually

  • paid to rate things.

  • And I think I touched on it in the video on collateralized

  • debt obligations.

  • But their incentives are a little bit strange.

  • Let's say I have Moody's.

  • Moody's is one of the ratings agencies, and they rate

  • Corporation A as BB.

  • So they've said, these guys, they're pretty good, but

  • they're not the U.S. government or something.

  • There's a chance that they can go under, for whatever

  • reasons, or they're sensitive to the economy as a whole.

  • And I say, man, I would love to lend these guys money.

  • I would love to lend these guys the $1

  • billion that they need.

  • And these guys are willing to pay me 8% interest. But I

  • can't do it, me as a pension fund, I

  • cannot lend them money.

  • Because I'm only allowed to lend money to A or

  • above types of bonds.

  • Or I can only buy A or above type of instruments.

  • So what do I do?

  • This guy needs money.

  • I have money to give him, but his corporate credit rating,

  • that was given by Moody's, just isn't high enough for me

  • to lend him the money.

  • And this is where credit default swaps come in.

  • In an ideal world, I would give Corporation A, I would

  • give them $1 billion.

  • And then maybe they would annually give me, let me make

  • up a number, 10% per year.

  • And then this might have a term for 10 years, and then

  • after 10 years, they'll pay me the $1 billon back and then

  • I'll be happy.

  • But as I said multiple times, I can't do it, because they

  • are BB rated.

  • And my charter says I can only invest in A rated bonds.

  • So I go to another entity.

  • And let's call this entity AIG.

  • And these entities are essentially insurance

  • companies on debt.

  • And I'm calling this one AIG because AIG

  • actually did do this.

  • But it could be anything.

  • A lot of banks did this, a lot of insurance

  • companies did this.

  • There are some companies that just specialize in writing

  • collateralized-- sorry, in writing credit default swaps.

  • What does AIG do for me?

  • Well first of all, it's important to note that Moody's

  • has given AIG, I don't know, let's give it a AA rating.

  • I don't know what their actual rating was.

  • They said, you know what, they are almost risk-free.

  • They're almost like the U.S. government.

  • Moody's has looked at their books, or supposedly, or

  • hopefully has looked at their books, and says, oh you know,

  • if you loan them money, they're good for it.

  • So they have a very, very high rating.

  • Although, once again, you have to worry about the incentive.

  • Because who paid Moody's to give them that rating?

  • And whenever you're getting paid to give a rating, you

  • have to wonder about what your incentives are, in terms of

  • how you rate things.

  • But anyway that's a discussion for another video.

  • But what AIG says is, you know what pension fund?

  • I know you want to lend Corporation A money, and

  • Corporation A wants to borrow money from you, but you have

  • this problem because they're BB rated.

  • So what we're going to do is we're going

  • to insure this bond.

  • We're going to insure this loan that you're giving to

  • Corporate B.

  • What we want in return for that is an insurance premium.

  • We want you to pay us a little bit of this

  • interest every year.

  • If you pay us a little bit of this interest every year, we

  • will insure this payment.

  • So you get 10% a year, and you give us 1% a year.

  • So you give us 1% a year.

  • And this is also 1%-- just to learn a little bit of

  • financial jargon-- this is also someone would say 100

  • basis points.

  • One basis point is 1/100th of 1%.

  • So 1% of the same thing as 100 basis points.

  • 2% is the same thing as 200 basis points.

  • So you pay me 100 basis points of the 10% per year, and in

  • exchange, I will give you insurance on A's debt.

  • And in fact, it might have not even been structured this way.

  • It might have been structured so that Corporation A right

  • here, before even issuing the bonds, they include this

  • insurance with the bond.

  • So instead of giving 10%, they cut out 1% to insure it.

  • And then these essentially become AA bonds.

  • And why is that?

  • Well, they're BB, but you're being insured by

  • someone who is AA.

  • So all of the sudden, these bonds, because they're being

  • insured by this entity that is AA, which Moody's has

  • determined is AA, these bonds are now good enough for my

  • pension fund to hold.

  • Because I said, you know what even if corporation A goes

  • under, I have this AA guy insuring it.

  • And so I'm fine.

  • So this is the equivalent of holding AA bonds.

  • And what's my effective interest rate?

  • I'm getting 9% per year, right?

  • I'm getting 10% per year from Corporation B, and then I have

  • to pay 1% to AIG.

  • And if Corporation B goes under tomorrow, AIG is going

  • to give me my $1 billion back.

  • And you might say, Sal, this sounds like

  • a pretty good situation.

  • And this is where it starts to get a little bit shady.

  • Because AIG, they're not just insuring my debt or my loan

  • that I gave to corporation A.

  • And think about it, AIG didn't have to do anything.

  • AIG didn't have to put up any collateral.

  • AIG didn't say, you know what, out of all of our assets, here

  • is $1 billion that we're going to set aside, just in case

  • Corporation A doesn't pay.

  • Right?

  • You would think that if you wanted to be guaranteed that

  • this money was going to come to you, this AIG corporation

  • would have to set aside the money.

  • But they didn't have to do that.

  • They just have to say, hey, Moody's has said we're AA,

  • we're good for debt.

  • We're good for insurance.

  • So you just pay us 1% a year and trust us, or trust

  • Moody's, that we really are good for the money.

  • They never had to set aside the money.

  • You're just going on a leap of faith that, if and when

  • Corporation A defaults, AIG is going to be

  • good for the money.

  • Now this is where it gets interesting.

  • Let me erase Moody's from the screen-- actually, maybe I'll

  • go down here.

  • AIG didn't just insure my debt.

  • Let's say that there is Corporation C's debt.

  • Let's say that they're B-- I don't know, all these ratings

  • have different terminology.

  • They're B+ rated.

  • Right?

  • And let's say there's $10 billion of debt that they

  • borrow from some other party.

  • And in return, they give 11%.

  • And this is Pension Fund B.

  • And this pension fund had the same problem.

  • They can only buy A-rated or above bonds.

  • AIG also insures their debt that they gave

  • to Corporation C.

  • Maybe they'll pay them-- Corporation C is maybe a

  • little bit riskier, so out of the 11% I have to pay maybe

  • 150 basis points.

  • Or 1 and 1/2%, that's the same thing as 1%.

  • And in exchange, they insure C's debt.

  • Now something very interesting can happen here.

  • AIG all of the sudden has an excellent

  • business model, right?

  • Because they were able to get this AA rating from Moody's,

  • they can just keep insuring other people's debt, and they

  • don't have to put any money aside, right?

  • They don't have to give their assets to anyone else.

  • And they just get these income streams, right?

  • From my pension fund they're getting 1%

  • per year of $1 billion.

  • From this pension fund, they're getting 1 and 1/2%,

  • 150 basis points, per year.

  • And they can do this, frankly, as much as they want.

  • They could do this a thousand times.

  • And as long as Moody's doesn't get suspicious.

  • As long as Moody's doesn't start saying, hey, wait a

  • second, AIG, you only have $100 billion in assets, but

  • you have insured $1 trillion of other people's debt.

  • Something shady going on, I'm going to lower your rating.

  • As long as that doesn't happen, this AIG corporation

  • can just keep insuring more and more debt.

  • And frankly, as long as none of that debt goes bad, they

  • just get this excellent income stream, and their CEO will get

  • excellent bonuses.

  • I think you start to see where you're having a single point

  • of failure and a house of cards, and I'll continue that

  • in the next video.

Let's say that I'm a pension fund, and I have money to lend

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