And now from the future Parent's country: http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,662447,00.html

Gerhard Strate, a well-respected lawyer based in Hamburg, has seen a lot of things over the years. But he still has a hard time believing the story of the Deutsche Bank funds db Kompass Life 1 and 2, calling it "unbelievable" and "absurd." The closed-end funds buy life insurance policies from Americans and assume responsibility for paying their future premiums. When the original policy-holder dies, the entire payout goes to the fund. It is like short-selling US life expectancy.<script type="text/Java­Script"> <script type="text/Java­Script">

Deutsche Bank collected some €500,000 ($750,000) from customers for its macabre money-making scheme. But the fund quickly turned into a mega-flop. So far, not one investor has received even a single dividend payment and some may lose their entire principal.

Chasing ambulances is really nothing. Now they will short sell your life.

Suckers of the world, unite!

'Zombie Buildings': Are They The Next Economic Calamity? (VIDEO)

Financial reports this month from federal regulators and industry analysts detail a new cycle of uncertainty that they fear could cripple the economic recovery. Billions of dollars in commercial debt will have to be paid back or refinanced at a time when property values have plummeted. About $500 billion will come due in 2010 alone and an equal amount every year through at least 2012, according to the Federal Reserve.

Many banks that cater to regional and community developments were largely unscathed by the residential mortgage meltdown. But now they are facing huge numbers of possible defaults by builders who erected thousands of office towers, condominiums and shopping centers with the easy credit available five years ago. With few tenants, those developments are turning into what industry insiders call zombie buildings.

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/features/readinglists/what-to-read-on-the-financial-crisis

"Causes of the Financial Crisis." Critical Review 21, nos. 2-3 (2009). 
Read

This special issue of Critical Review includes a dozen articles by prominent economists with differing beliefs and emphases. Together, they yield a helpful and important guide to serious debates over what happened and why. Joseph E. Stiglitz argues that the roots of the crisis lay in decisions made by banks facing misguided incentives and lackluster regulation. John B. Taylor, conversely, argues that the crisis was "caused, prolonged, and worsened by a series of government actions and interventions." Articles by Jeffrey Friedman, Viral Acharya and Matthew Richardson, and Amar Bhidé detail how the crisis evolved from a set of regulations and practices that were well adapted to old situations but not new ones. Peter Wallison argues that credit-default swaps were not to blame for the financial crisis, while Lawrence White asserts that the peculiar authority granted by the government to credit-ratings agencies like Standard and Poor's, Moody's, and Fitch was very much part of the problem.