“Let me get this straight, you’re lending billions with cheese as collateral?” “Not cheese. Parmesan. Parmigiano-Reggiano to be precise.“ “So, you finance this by packaging the Parmesan loans into Parmesan CDO A, which has part of Parmesan CDO B and both get put into Parmesan CDO C?” “Yeah. The original loans are backed by wheels of Parmesan. Minimum age of 12 months. Some are 24 months. 36 months. 48 month. Hell, up to 120 months. Delicious. Millions of wheels. But Parmesan CDO C is a synthetic Parmesan CDO. A CDO of Parmesan CDOs. Parmesan Squared if you will.” “What if it gets too hot in the summer and the wheels of Parmesan melt?” “We’ll sell Parmesan credit default swaps.” “C’mon! How much bigger is the market for Parmesan-backed sythentic loan and CDS products than actual edible real-life Parmesan that I can grate on top of my homemade spaghetti bolognese tonight?” “At least 10,000x.” “Ok, let’s say we have an underlying pool of $10 million in Parmesan wheels. How much money could be out there betting on your synthetic Parmesan financial products?” “Probably $100 billion.” “That is fucking crazy.” “No, it’s awesome.”