This eTextbook edition is a print replica of the finance classic, Structured Finance and Collateralized Debt Obligations: New Developments in Cash and Synthetic Securitization (Second Edition), by derivatives expert, Janet Tavakoli. Tavakoli’s iconic book has been referenced by law firms, Congress, and scholarly publications. This electronic version’s text page numbers are identical to those used in public references. The remastered eBook has been optimized for the best possible screen view of the text in its original form and will appear on your reading devices as normal text irrespective of the Amazon preview.Structured Finance (Second Edition) was originally published by John Wiley & Sons in September 2008, concurrent with the Global Financial Crises. It is real time valuable evidence due to Tavakoli’s accurate analysis of the dangers of leverage compounded by risky mortgage collateral and other shoddy loans, credit derivatives, collateralized debt obligations, and additional structures with hidden leveraged risks. Tavakoli explained how malicious mischief led to permanent value destruction of securitizations, endangering highly leveraged global financial institutions. Her analysis proved both prescient and accurate. Among the wealth of practical information, Tavakoli highlighted and explained the short ABX Index trade, later known as “The Big Short,” in chapter eight under the subsection “A Good Year for Some,” eighteen months before Michael Lewis published his book about the trade. She explained it in real time, as the trades occurred. Her analysis of securitizations that finance professionals knew or should have known were built-to-fail, and her assertion that there was massive intentional obfuscation of those facts, make her book unique in global finance. Janet Tavakoli pulls no punches in explaining key issues in valuing structured financial products and crucial quality control problems. Tavakoli’s vast experiences is on display as she exposes the illusion of profit in the newly massively lucrative CDO arbitrage made possible by synthetics, that employ credit derivatives technology. Tavakoli shines a bright light on control fraud: the misrated tranches imperiled by perverse financial engineering, dumping of “highly rated” securitizations on bank balance sheets, models that obfuscated risk, accounting malfeasance, the uses and abuses of offshore special purpose entities, the role of hedge funds, fraud in the origination of subprime, Alt-A, and prime mortgage loans, and toxic securitizations. While providing an overview of the market and its dynamic growth, Tavakoli exposes a vast array of structured products and documents warnings about them, and how to avoid being burned by them. More than that, she explains how to be on the other side, the winning side, of these trades. She explains new financial instruments still in use today, how to approach valuation and risk/return analysis for collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), synthetic CDOs, credit derivatives, total return swaps, structured notes, and much more. She educates the reader about cash versus synthetic arbitrage CDOs; risks posed by credit derivatives on asset-backed securities (CDSs of ABS), asset-backed commercial paper conduits, synthetic indexes; subprime and Alt-A securitization; multi-sector securitization of a variety of shoddy loans, new Euro securitizations, and new ways of introducing hidden leverage. Tavakoli not only exposes fraud, she explains how to recognize it in advance of financial consequences and what can be done to act against it. She also highlights areas of practical and useful application of structured financial products.