How One Mississippi County Played Wall Street’s Fiddle
The Mississippi State Capitol building in Jackson.
Photographer: Suzi Altman/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
All signs pointed to a Mississippi county’s bet with Wall Street going south.
Officials in Hinds County, where one in four residents live in poverty, didn’t know what they were getting into, according to an independent audit. They couldn’t explain the mechanics of the interest-rate swaps they negotiated with Rice Financial Products Co., a New York derivatives dealer. They couldn’t say how semi-annual payments on the leveraged bets were determined.