That was Orange County in 1994, and the county treasurer had unwisely invested a large portion of the county's $7.5 billion investment pool in leveraged interest-based securities. Those securities were equivalent to options (bets) and the risk was not offset (not covered or spread). It's really not that difficult to understand. If you bet your own money, you might go broke. If you bet other people's money as well, they can get pretty cranky about it. Robert Citron lost a lot of peoples' money.

Try using spell-check.