By Peter Robison, Pat Wechsler and Martin Z. Braun
Salvatore Calvanese, the treasurer of Springfield, Massachusetts, for four years, had a ready defense for why he risked $14 million of taxpayer money on collateralized-debt obligations laden with subprime mortgages in 2007.
He didn’t know what he was buying, he says, and trusted the financial professionals who sold them and told him they were safe.
I thought they were money markets that were just paying more,” Calvanese said in an interview. “Nobody ever used the term ‘CDO,’ and I am not sure I would have known what that was anyway.”
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