due diligence - noun

The oversight appropriate to a money-making opportunity, i.e. cost-cutting and maximally efficient. Whatever supervision is sufficient to allay investors without expending further time and money.

troubled – adjective

Worthless, nugatory; bogus.

(See also distressed, toxic, illiquid.)

COMMENT: "Troubled asset" is, strictly speaking, a contradiction in terms.

bridge loan – noun

Short-term financing that takes a company from one insolvent shore, safely spans the turbid waters of liquidation, and delivers it to the opposite insolvent shore.

pension fund – noun

An investment pool set aside by an employer to serve as collateral for a leveraged buyout.

securitize – verb

1. To purchase, facelift, and flip a set of mortgages or loans.

2. To pass the buck, to dodge, to cop out.

deposit – noun

Money placed at a bank as collateral for highly leveraged investments.

COMMENT: Deposits are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. This is perhaps why Americans have an exceedingly low savings rate.

bankruptcy – noun

1. (individual) A state of moral degeneracy, in which a person willfully and without conscience incurs debt he cannot repay.

2. (corporate) A brief period of financial restructuring; a fiscal hiccup.

executive compensation – noun

Payment to an executive for loss or suffering incurred from interaction with middle management, staff, and other rabble.

rating agency – noun

An advertising firm that specializes in the sale of bonds.

Issuers thus were forced to seek credit ratings (or else their bonds would not be marketable). The agencies—realizing they had a hot product and, what's more, a captive market—started charging the very organizations whose bonds they were rating. — Roger Lowenstein

incentivize – verb

(Also: "incent")

To entice someone to do something he would normally abhor, such as acting for the good of the public or of the company for which he works.

core values – noun

The values one holds with the greatest irony.

complex – adjective (reprise)

Sufficiently obscure to couch financial risk.

subprime – adjective

Below optimal in credit, but above optimal in naivete.

financial – adjective

(Etymology: Latin finis "end, utmost limit, highest point")

Having to do with the ultimate ends or limits of human existence; existential.

USAGE: Personal financial crisis, if accumulated to too many folks, hurts our country.— President Bush

Blaming speculators as a response to financial crisis goes back at least to the Greeks. It's almost always the wrong response.—Larry Summers

footnote – noun

A comment affixed to the bottom of a page that discusses something tangential to the main text, e.g. a statement of losses on a balance sheet.

Is diplomacy in the lexicon?

Commenter "funnyme" responds to an Obama-McCain discussion on the Napa Valley Register's website:

Is the word "Diplomacy" in a TERRORIST's dictionary?


No, it's not.

Uh, yes, it is.

moral compass – noun

A guidance mechanism that indicates which direction is morally right, so that one can plot the course he wishes to take and tack accordingly.

can – verb

Occurs in at least one of an infinite number of possible worlds (but not necessarily in the actual one).

voter – noun

1. A node in a causal nexus that begins with visual and audible stimuli and ends with an arm pulling a lever.

2. A celebrant in a collective prayer for public relief.

appraisal – noun

The rigorous computation of a property's value based on a careful weighing of equivalently inflated comparables.