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Bonds Are a 'Safe' Investment: A Big Lie Gets Even BiggerYep, you guessed it. Someone has devised an index to track the value of international and marketable art works. Michael Moses, founder of the Mei Moses Art Index, uses the recent auction prices of museum quality art to determine the appreciation of various works of art.
So now, let's take this a step further. Suzanne Gyorgy is the head of the art division for Citibank(NYSE:C). When she looked at the balance sheets of bank customers, she found that many of them included works of art as an asset group. Being creative and seizing on an opportunity, she set up a loan division at Citi that specializes in collateralized loans based on valuable art works. A client can obtain a loan of up to 50% of the underlying value of the art. To determine its value, Ms. Gyorgy has a nine member team of specialists in this field. Once the value is determined the loan can be made. Most loans fall between $5 million and $100 million.
In retrospect, bankers could have avoided much of the financial crisis they created if they had had a team of specialists placing a fair value on the underlying collateral of the CDO's (collateralized deb obligations) and CLO's (collateralized loan obligations) they were trading.
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