Appeared on June 25, 2008
The contracts underlying the securities allowed investors to shift some responsibility back to individual institutions threatening them with insolvency, according to Joseph Mason, professor of finance at Drexel University's LeBow College of Business. What's interesting about this world and interesting about the business world in general is that contracts are made to be amended, if not broken," he said. "This was part of what investors were counting on....We're nowhere near the end here. We just have this lull. Some might call it a dead-cat bounce. I would say it's still the same cat."