"What started out to be a protection product for banks has turned out to be an opportunity to spin the roulette wheel," says Janet Tavakoli, president of Tavakoli Structured Finance in Chicago. She says companies can profit by taking on large amounts of risk, but there's a chance that if they can't pay out when things go bad, it could start a chain reaction through the whole financial system. "People are concerned about a domino effect," Ms. Tavakoli says. "A lot of hedge funds have adopted the same strategy, so if one goes belly up, you're thinking, 'How many others have the same strategy and will suffer the same problems?'"

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Janet Tavakoli is the president of Tavakoli Structured Finance, a Chicago-based firm that provides consulting to financial institutions and institutional investors. Ms. Tavakoli has more than 20 years of experience in senior investment banking positions, trading, structuring and marketing structured financial products. She is a former adjunct professor of derivatives at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business. She is the author of: Credit Derivatives & Synthetic Structures (John Wiley & Sons, 1998, 2001), Structured Finance & Collateralized Debt Obligations (John Wiley & Sons, 2008).

Janet Tavakoli's book on the global financial meltdown is Dear Mr. Buffett: What An Investor Learns 1,269 Miles From Wall Street (Wiley 2009).

Clients of Tavakoli Structured Finance have the benefit of proprietary consultation, which is not available in any other paid or public forum. Clients also commission proprietary research and analysis.

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