In December 2007, journalists Carrick Mollenkamp and Serena Ng wrote of a CDO called Norma created by Merrill Lynch at the behest of Illinois hedge fund, Magnetar. It was a tailor-made bet on subprime mortgages that went "too far." Janet Tavakoli, a Chicago consultant who specializes in CDOs, said Norma "is a tangled hairball of risk." When it came to market in March 2007, "any savvy investor would have thrown this...in the trash bin."[