Benjamin Lawsky, New York's regulator, warns that this is "financial alchemy" of a sort that featured prominently in the financial crisis.
Several firms are hoping for some financial alchemy.
William D. Cohan, a Wall Street deal-adviser for 17 years, wrote in the Washington Post: "Seemingly alone among private-equity firms," Bain Capital under Romney's leadership "was a master at bait-and-switching Wall Street bankers to get its hands on the companies that provided the raw material for its financial alchemy".
But by the time I handed the department on, in 2008, it had, through some miraculous financial alchemy, been running at a deficit for some years.
The partnerships were feats of financial alchemy that became a dumping ground for Enron's flagging assets and helped sustain the growing fabulism of the company's accounting as a wide-eyed investing world watched in wonder.
He would undergo far more regulatory scrutiny, and it would be far messier for him to practice his financial alchemy.
Even better, the financial alchemy that could produce an 800 per cent profit in a fortnight was only for a select few.
Brokers, for their part, borrow securities to plug temporarily the gaps between whatever securities they promised their clients and what they were able to source from the markets.Stock lending is also used by firms that want to trade low-grade securities (such as equities) for better-quality assets (such as government bonds), a piece of financial alchemy known as "collateral upgrading".
"There was financial alchemy at work".
The department's superintendent, Benjamin M. Lawsky, recently called them "financial alchemy".
