If the crush of court decisions causes a tobacco company to go bust, at least there are other companies feeding into the settlement pools.
Combined with earlier settlements, the pool available to compensate investors who lost billions as Enron tumbled into bankruptcy in 2001 has grown to $4.7 billion and could eventually surpass the $6.13 billion that Wall Street firms have agreed to pay WorldCom investors.
Even with the withdrawal of tobacco settlement payments, the pools are expected to stay flush, Pataki administration officials said, because of an unexpected windfall from the conversion of Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield, a former nonprofit insurer, into a profit-making organization.
The proposed Bank of America settlement covers 530 mortgage pools issued by Countrywide Financial, the lender purchased by the bank in a distress sale in 2008.
Being nomads, the Bedouin struggle to provide proof of abode.At Hadidiya, a Bedouin camp in arid wasteland next to a Jewish settlement replete with swimming pools, the remains of tents flattened by Israeli troops litter the scrub.
These influential figures can determine how pension funds are invested, as well as state university endowments, municipal bond proceeds, tobacco settlement funds, hurricane insurance pools, prepaid tuition programs and other giant blocks of public money.
Settlements can be pooled, sliced and recombined into a dizzying array of financial instruments, including "death" bonds, derivatives, notes and swaps.
One settlement within city limits-Biddeford Pool, a sort of peninsula into the Atlantic-had been attracting rich summer people from the cities of the Midwest for as long as the mills had been attracting poor French Canadians.
Ms. Tillwitz, an executive overseeing the project for DBRS, said the firm spent nine months getting comfortable with the myriad risks associated with rating a pool of life settlements.
