Credit Default Swaps (CDS) y Collateral Debt Obligation (CDO) derivados financieros responsables de la crisis sub-prime de 2008 en Estados Unidos y una guía para el desarrollo del mercado de derivados exóticos en Colombia

La crisis financiera hipotecaria de 2008 en la que se declaró en quiebra el banco de inversión Lehman Brothers, se desarrolló en un ambiente que contemplaba apalancamientos financieros excesivos y el uso de derivados financieros de crédito innovadores. Razón por la cual, a partir del estudio de caso de quiebra de este banco de inversión y el análisis de las causas y consecuencias del ambiente desregulatorio que surgió en Estados Unidos desde la década de los 30 hasta el 2000, se orienta la investigación a indagar sobre lo que sucede en términos regulatorios y empresariales en el mercado de valores colombiano y así lograr definir objetivos que permitan el crecimiento del mercado de derivados exóticos en Colombia bajo un marco de responsabilidad financiera y ética empresarial.

Difference between default telecoil and programmed microphone frequency response in behind-the-ear hearing aids

The notion that the default telecoil (t-coil) frequency response should match the programmed microphone frequency response to provide optimal telephone understanding for hearing aid patients has received little attention. This study addresses differences in the average frequency response of the two transducers in behind-the-ear (BTE) hearing aids.

Los credit default swaps: estructura jurídica y operatividad financiera

El presente trabajo aunque de naturaleza técnica, pretende dos cosas fundamentales: familiarizar al lector con los denominados “instrumentos derivados” que tienen volúmenes gigantescos de negociación en su mercado propio (el OTC) ascendiendo “ … a finales de junio de 2009 a 605 billones de dólares (10 veces el PIB mundial)”1; y, revisar con más profundidad uno de aquellos, una innovación financiera derivada de los contratos de permuta financiera que toma el nombre de Credit Default Swaps. Esta innovación o evolución sobre los instrumentos derivados ordinarios, representa un tipo de contratos altamente estandarizados y tecnificados que fueron creados como una nueva forma de protección sobre incumplimientos de crédito viabilizando la transmisión de uno, varios o todos los riesgos asociados con la posibilidad de incumplimiento de pago de operaciones crediticias a terceros quienes los reciben en virtud de un precio. Como se verá en del transcurso del trabajo, el loable objetivo de protección para el que fueron originalmente creados, se desnaturalizó hasta convertir a estos instrumentos en independientes de las obligaciones que amparaban y permitir su acceso a especuladores financieros que amasaron grandes fortunas apostando a favor y en contra de obligaciones y fracturando, de esta manera, la transparencia que es principio fundamental de los mercados financieros. La evolución insidiosa y el descontrol de estos instrumentos, sin embargo, ha permitido su proliferación e interferencia, no solo en obligaciones particulares sino que ha contaminado los mismos mercados de deuda soberana, incluyendo la ecuatoriana como se verá en su momento y muy recientemente la denominada “crisis griega”; los especuladores han utilizado estos complejos productos para aprovecharse de los ingentes beneficios que les proporcionan en desmedro de las economías de países en dificultades multiplicando sus pérdidas y causando alarma y conmoción tanto interna como externa al punto que muy pocos días antes de la presentación de este trabajo, Francia, Alemania, Luxemburgo, la afectada Grecia y el mismísimo Presidente de la CEE, han llamado a la comunidad financiera internacional a limitar su uso.

Los Credit Default Swap (CDS) o seguros contra cesación de pagos y su estructuración legal como garantía para los inversionistas

La crisis financiera del 2008 provocó la pérdida de riqueza y el derrumbe de los mercados bursátiles y de la economía real, traducida en desempleo, reducción de la productividad, recesión profunda, e incertidumbre en los mercados financieros. En el marco de la crisis de deuda soberana europea, es cuestionable también el grado de certeza de los CDS (Credit Default Swap) como garantía para los inversionistas, considerando las negociaciones existentes entre emisores y bancos europeos para evitar el default de estos instrumentos y por tanto, evitar la indemnización a los inversionistas en su calidad de acreedores. Remontándonos, la crisis financiera internacional del año 2008 tuvo como uno de sus orígenes a las hipotecas denominadas como “subprime”. Estas hipotecas fueron “empaquetadas” junto a otras de alta calificación, en grupos de hipotecas para ser titularizadas y colocadas en el mercado bursátil, mediante instrumentos denominados CDO (Collateralized Debt Obligations), y a aseguradas en algunos casos, través de los CDS (Credit Default Swap), siendo principalmente estos últimos instrumentos financieros, blanco de las críticas y señalados como uno de los culpables de la crisis financiera internacional. Bajo estas consideraciones, se pretende en esta investigación, analizar específicamente los CDS (Credit Default Swap), para determinar su naturaleza jurídica como verdaderos seguros contra cesación de pagos, o como permutas de incumplimiento crediticio. Comprender su estructuración legal como instrumento de garantía para los inversionistas institucionales o particulares, considerando el acontecimiento de la quita de los bonos griegos, la crisis de deuda soberana europea y el default de la deuda argentina, así como las consideraciones del ISDA (International Swaps and Derivatives Association) en estos puntos; su marco legal, su contribución en la reducción del riesgo, su papel especulativo y su incidencia real en la crisis financiera del año 2008.

A simple model of multiple equilibria and default. CEPS Working Document No. 366, 16 July 2012

This Working Document by Daniel Gros presents a simple model that incorporates two types of sovereign default cost: first, a lump-sum cost due to the fact that the country does not service its debt fully and is recognised as being in default status, by ratings agencies, for example. Second, a cost that increases with the size of the losses (or haircut) imposed on creditors whose resistance to a haircut increases with the proportional loss inflicted upon them. One immediate implication of the model is that under some circumstances the creditors have a (collective) interest to forgive some debt in order to induce the country not to default. The model exhibits a potential for multiple equilibria, given that a higher interest rate charged by investors increases the debt service burden and thus the temptation to default. Under very high debt levels credit rationing can set in as the feedback loop between higher interest rates and the higher incentive to default can become explosive. The introduction of uncertainty makes multiple equilibria less likely and reduces their range.

Making the least active pay: a simulation of rewards and penalties under Demand Side Participation programs

The orthodox approach for incentivising Demand Side Participation (DSP) programs is that utility losses from capital, installation and planning costs should be recovered under financial incentive mechanisms which aim to ensure that utilities have the right incentives to implement DSP activities. The recent national smart metering roll-out in the UK implies that this approach needs to be reassessed since utilities will recover the capital costs associated with DSP technology through bills. This paper introduces a reward and penalty mechanism focusing on residential users. DSP planning costs are recovered through payments from those consumers who do not react to peak signals. Those consumers who do react are rewarded by paying lower bills. Because real-time incentives to residential consumers tend to fail due to the negligible amounts associated with net gains (and losses) or individual users, in the proposed mechanism the regulator determines benchmarks which are matched against responses to signals and caps the level of rewards/penalties to avoid market distortions. The paper presents an overview of existing financial incentive mechanisms for DSP; introduces the reward/penalty mechanism aimed at fostering DSP under the hypothesis of smart metering roll-out; considers the costs faced by utilities for DSP programs; assesses linear rate effects and value changes; introduces compensatory weights for those consumers who have physical or financial impediments; and shows findings based on simulation runs on three discrete levels of elasticity.

Default perception of high-speed motion

When human observers are exposed to even slight motion signals followed by brief visual transients—stimuli containing no detectable coherent motion signals—they perceive large and salient illusory jumps. This novel effect, which we call “high phi”, challenges well-entrenched assumptions about the perception of motion, namely the minimal-motion principle and the breakdown of coherent motion perception with steps above an upper limit. Our experiments with transients such as texture randomization or contrast reversal show that the magnitude of the jump depends on spatial frequency and transient duration, but not on the speed of the inducing motion signals, and the direction of the jump depends on the duration of the inducer. Jump magnitude is robust across jump directions and different types of transient. In addition, when a texture is actually displaced by a large step beyond dmax, a breakdown of coherent motion perception is expected, but in the presence of an inducer observers again perceive coherent displacements at or just above dmax. In sum, across a large variety of stimuli, we find that when incoherent motion noise is preceded by a small bias, instead of perceiving little or no motion, as suggested by the minimal-motion principle, observers perceive jumps whose amplitude closely follows their own dmax limits.

Mind wandering away from pain dynamically engages antinociceptive and default mode brain networks

Human minds often wander away from their immediate sensory environment. It remains unknown whether such mind wandering is unsystematic or whether it lawfully relates to an individual’s tendency to attend to salient stimuli such as pain and their associated brain structure/function. Studies of pain–cognition interactions typically examine explicit manipulation of attention rather than spontaneous mind wandering. Here we sought to better represent natural fluctuations in pain in daily life, so we assessed behavioral and neural aspects of spontaneous disengagement of attention from pain. We found that an individual’s tendency to attend to pain related to the disruptive effect of pain on his or her cognitive task performance. Next, we linked behavioral findings to neural networks with strikingly convergent evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging during pain coupled with thought probes of mind wandering, dynamic resting state activity fluctuations, and diffusion MRI. We found that (i) pain-induced default mode network (DMN) deactivations were attenuated during mind wandering away from pain; (ii) functional connectivity fluctuations between the DMN and periaqueductal gray (PAG) dynamically tracked spontaneous attention away from pain; and (iii) across individuals, stronger PAG–DMN structural connectivity and more dynamic resting state PAG–DMN functional connectivity were associated with the tendency to mind wander away from pain. These data demonstrate that individual tendencies to mind wander away from pain, in the absence of explicit manipulation, are subserved by functional and structural connectivity within and between default mode and antinociceptive descending modulation networks.

Increased resting state functional connectivity in the default mode network in recovered anorexia nervosa.

Functional brain imaging studies have shown abnormal neural activity in individuals recovered from anorexia nervosa (AN) during both cognitive and emotional task paradigms. It has been suggested that this abnormal activity which persists into recovery might underpin the neurobiology of the disorder and constitute a neural biomarker for AN. However, no study to date has assessed functional changes in neural networks in the absence of task-induced activity in those recovered from AN. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate whole brain resting state functional connectivity in nonmedicated women recovered from anorexia nervosa. Functional magnetic resonance imaging scans were obtained from 16 nonmedicated participants recovered from anorexia nervosa and 15 healthy control participants. Independent component analysis revealed functionally relevant resting state networks. Dual regression analysis revealed increased temporal correlation (coherence) in the default mode network (DMN) which is thought to be involved in self-referential processing. Specifically, compared to healthy control participants the recovered anorexia nervosa participants showed increased temporal coherence between the DMN and the precuneus and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex/inferior frontal gyrus. The findings support the view that dysfunction in resting state functional connectivity in regions involved in self-referential processing and cognitive control might be a vulnerability marker for the development of anorexia nervosa.