BRAZEN: BIG BANKS, SWAP MANIA AND THE FALLOUT

Following the 2008 Financial Crisis, news broke that big banks in the US were collecting hundreds of billions of dollars from non-profit parties. These enormous sums represented annual settlement and termination payments for bilateral contracts known as Interest Rate Swaps (IRSs). Starting in the late 1990s, big banks targeted non-profits for massive sales of all types of such contracts. Non-profits ended up being perennial losers, eventually owing enormous sums of money to the banks for n…