Back-Door Taxes Hit Americans With Public Financing in the Dark

By Peter Robison, Pat Wechsler and Martin Z. Braun

Oct. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Salvatore Calvanese, the treasurer of Springfield, Massachusetts, for four years, had a ready defense for why he risked $14 million of taxpayer money on collateralized-debt obligations laden with subprime mortgages in 2007.

He didn’t know what he was buying, he says, and trusted the financial professionals who sold them and told him they were safe.

“I thought they were money markets that were just paying more,â€