When is the actual value of an item ever not vague? Your criticism is meaningless.
=======================
I was referring, of course to those ostensibly "insured" bundled mortgages.
Are they worth the original amount borrowed? A $300K loan on a house whose value has sunk to $250K is obviously NOT worth $300K. To buy that loan, it would need to be unbundled and reevaluated, which would also have its costs, so it is probably not even worth $250K.
And the derivatives of these loans are also of dubious value.
So my criticism is NOT "meaningless", it is at the root of the problem. I suggest this is why Paulson did not try to buy back these loans as he said he was going to do--the value of them is too vague
, and the prce is controversial, to say the least.