purpose, strategy, method of operation and risk profile are best understood in comparison to such institutions. We finance the purchases and originations of our ARM Assets with equity capital, unsecured debt, Collateralized Mortgage Debt and short-term borrowings such as Reverse Repurchase Agreements, Asset-backed CP, whole loan financing facilities, and other collateralized financings that we may establish in the future. When we borrow short-term or floating-rate funds to finance our Hybrid ARM Assets, we also enter into interest rate hedging transactions, which are intended to fix, or cap, our borrowing costs during the fixed-rate period of the Hybrid ARM assets. We believe we have minimized our exposure to changes in interest rates since the assets we hold are primarily ARM Assets and we generally match the Effective Duration, which is a calculation expressed in months or years that is a measure of the expected price change of financial instruments based on changes in interest rates, of those assets with funding of comparable Effective Duration. We have a policy to operate with an Adjusted Equity-to-Assets Ratio, a non-GAAP measurement, of at least 8%. See “Capital Utilization and Leverage” on page 38 for an explanation and a calculation of our Adjusted Equity-to-Assets Ratio. Moreover, we focus on acquiring High Quality assets to minimize potential credit losses and to ensure our access to financing. Our operating structure has resulted in operating costs well below those of other mortgage originators. Our corporate structure differs from most lending institutions in that we are organized for tax purposes as a REIT and, therefore, pay substantially all of our earnings in the form of dividends to shareholders.