For a supposedly risk-free asset it all adds up to a lot of risks.
Virtually all higher-yielding bonds lost ground to supposedly risk-free Treasuries.
Theatrical form, in other words, is being tested and shifted, even in the supposedly risk-averse world of the commercial musical.
The sow's ears, in her telling, were subprime mortgages that Wall Street repackaged into triple-A, supposedly risk-free securities that were touted as silk purses.
But they didn't, so she isn't, and now apparently it's fine to eat this delicious lump of minced offal that six months ago supposedly risked making us sick.
It would unlock chains of inter-company debt, as well as weaning banks off the easy option of keeping big chunks of their balance sheet in (supposedly) risk-free government bonds and encouraging them to take more credit risk.
And, more systematically, a downgrade would increase the default risk premium baked into various forms of financial analysis typically pegged to the supposedly risk-free 10-year Treasury rate increasing the cost of capital and causing headaches for corporate finance types everywhere.On the other hand, a well-signaled ratings drop need not cause an economic crisis.
Those traders and investment banks that cover their 30-year trading positions with repos (bond sales and repurchases) will find life more expensive they will ultimately have to buy and sell corporate bonds, which carry credit risk, rather than supposedly risk-free government bonds.
In fact, even though it was the large position in supposedly risk-free Greek government bonds that doomed Cyprus's banks, even now European regulators have imposed few binding limits on how much is too much when it comes to owning government bonds.
But Intrexon has come up with a supposedly risk-free way to tinker with a patient's DNA.
