The Sword Of Damocles

The Sword of Damocles is dangling overhead... the potential hit to earnings caused by a rise in short-term rates could be more than a blip. Financial companies account for 30% of U.S. corporate profits now, up from 18% a decade ago. And there's no way to know how much of that financial-sector profit comes from the spread between short-term and long-term rates; indeed, sometimes the companies themselves seem not to know how much of a rate bet is built into their bottom lines. (Witness the accounting mess at Fannie Mae.)

See: Fool's Paradise by Bernard Condon, Forbes 02.14.05
http://www.forbes.com/home/free_forbes/2005/0214/044.html