CDO

Acronym for collateralized debt obligation, a funding tool that banks use to package up a bunch of bonds (often subprime mortgage backed), then divide the package up into new bonds and sell them after skimming a few million dollars off the top. Usually called "diversified," but if you've got dog shit, horse shit, ape shit, and elephant shit, then you can call it whatever you want, but at the end of the day you're still just holding a gigantic pile of shit. A way of putting lipstick on a pig that banks milked the hell out of from the mid-1990's til 2007. Unfortunately the banks got totally Bear Stearned when everyone saw through the lipstick and they were caught holding a whole sty of CDO pigs.