CS/Synthetic CFO: Debt bomb

Investment banks are like arms manufacturers. They keep coming up with what Warren Buffett calls «financial weapons of mass destruction. « Like the intercontinental ballistic missiles of the Cold War era, today’s debt bombs are known by their acronyms and are fiendishly complex. They also need to be handled with extreme care. Take the exotically named «synthetic CFO» being launched in Europe by Credit Suisse. It may sound like a finance director built out of plastic and fiber. But it’s actually...