Chimaerae

At the Motley Fool, an explanation of a mythological name:

From Typhon and Echidna comes Chimera

The attractive returns that can come from buying investment securities -- whether equity or debt -- at heavily discounted prices has attracted the interest of mortgage investment REIT Annaly Capital Management (NYSE: NLY), which is working with Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) on the IPO of a new mortgage investment REIT called Chimera Investment. Last Friday, the company filed its initial S-11 filing with the SEC to kick off the IPO process.

The stated objective of the fund is to use the management team's expertise, along with a heavy dose of leverage, to find attractive opportunities in the world of mortgage debt. The strategy isn't all that much different from what Annaly already does, though Chimera does appear to have a greater appetite for risk.

Fear the Chimera
Those up on their Greek mythology (Wikipedia helped me with mine) know Chimera as an unearthly creature that was part lion, part snake, and part goat. As Hesiod's Theogony describes it, the beast "breathed raging fire, a creature fearful, great, swift-footed and strong, who had three heads, one of a grim-eyed lion; in her hinderpart, a dragon; and in her middle, a goat, breathing forth a fearful blast of blazing fire." Well. Such a grotesque and intimidating image is probably a good one for a fund focused on investing in an asset class that's in such sorry shape.

But I found myself questioning Chimera's aim. Though the timing is perfect for a vulture fund of this sort, Chimera's S-11 makes no direct reference to the idea of using current market dislocations to find good assets on the cheap.

Uwe Justus Wenzel warns about another kind of Chimera:

He warns of the dangers of inserting human DNA into animal egg cells to produce new stem cells and draws on mythology to make his point "Even the Chimera, which by its very nature serves as a messenger here, urges us to be cautious. It, too, stands for divine punishment, or more precisely, for the indirect outcome of the vindictiveness of the gods. The 'Chimera' - a three-headed monster, part lion, part goat and part snake - was the issue of an incestuous coupling between Typhon, a huge monster with the heads of a dragon and a snake, and Echidna, a creature that according to Hesiod was 'half woman and half monstrous serpent'. Both were conceived by Gaia, who had coupled with Tartaros of the dark underworld in an act of vengeance for the death of some of her other numerous children, the titans and the giants, who were killed by Zeus in a battle for power. The Chimera was finally destroyed by Bellerophon, a grandson of Sisyphus. It echoes in your ears: Gaia, the earth's primal mother, takes her revenge! Does she also stir up experiments in the Petri dish?"