> What acronyms can people think of that have been associated with the
> subprime crisis? Here are a few off the top of my head:
>
> CDO: collateralized debt obligation
> CDS: credit default swap
> ABS: asset backed security
> MBS: mortgage backed security
>
> Are these acronyms just about simplification and efficiency, or are
> they consciously a means of befuddling outsiders?
Neither, or certainly they are not to dupe or confuse people. Maybe I'm an old-fashioned cornball, but I like what Marcuse said in 1964 about acronyms establishing indisputable facts:
"Note on abridgment. NATO, SEATO, UN, AFL-CIO, AEC, but also USSR, DDR, etc. Most of these abbreviations are perfectly reasonable and justified by the length of the unabbreviated designata. However, one might venture to see in some of them a "cunning of Reason"--the abbreviation may help to repress undesired questions. NATO does not suggest what North Atlantic Treaty Organization says, namely, a treaty among nations on the North-Atlantic--in which case one might ask questions about the membership of Greece and Turkey. USSR abbreviates Socialism and Soviet; DDR: democratic. UN dispenses with undue emphasis on "united"; SEATO with those Southeast-Asian countries which do not belong to it. AFL-CIO entombs the radical difference which once separated the two organizations, and AEC is just one administrative agency among many others. The abbreviations denote that and only that which is institutionalized in such a way that the transcending connotation is cut off. The meaning is fixed, doctored, loaded. Once it has become an official vocable, constantly repeated in general usage, "sanctioned" by the intellectuals, it has lost all cognitive value and serves merely for recognition of an unquestionable fact."