NPR’s Toxic Asset

To understand more about a  deadly bacteria, a researcher would try to isolate it in the lab, study it, dissect it, sequence its genome, etc.  The folks at NPR who have been covering the financial crisis wanted to learn more about toxic assets, so they took a similar tack. They bought one and have been studying it, dissecting it, and sequencing its genome. Their ongoing work nicely illustrates what a canonical toxic asset is. (They went very toxic, paying $1,000 for a mortgage-backed security of Countrywide mortgages!)