Posted on 09/16/2008 9:41:11 PM PDT by PghBaldy
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That might not be a big enough dam for this river... You hear about the Russian Markets??? Yea, take a look at that and wonder.... http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6ff9306c-83f1-11dd-bf00-000077b07658.html
bm for later
I guess this is why I’ll never understand high finance - AIG’s supposedly got 1.3 trillion in assets, it just seems like 25 billion is the change left in the couch.
Meh. I guess I’m old fashioned, but I always thought the economy was best left alone, both from regulation and corporate welfare.
There is so much damn insolvency in the financial world, it makes one’s head spin. Is there one enterprise that wouldn’t fail if everyone demanded their money at the same time?
Since they recently bought 21st Century insurance I think we had better be locking for a new auto insurance company.
Since the banks are the majority of the voting members of the Federal Reserve they just voted to cover their backsides and stick it to the US citizens.
Strangely enough, I believe no matter what the govt does, there will be massive financial disaster. As it is, with the derivatives, which Warren Buffet (whose love of high taxes and Obama I strongly disagree with...) considers weapons of financial destruction (or words to that effect) I’m afraid eventually they will blow up. I also believe the financial world as a whole has been too careless in assuming their computer models can protect them by modeling the future. This period we are in HAS NOT been planned for by many of our best and brightest. No coincidence that the last crisis of similar complexity occurred before most of this wizards were born.
WHICH ABSOLUTELY NEEDS TO HAPPEN TO CLEAN UP THE MESS!!!
ALL THE GOVERNMENT IS DOING IS FORSTALLING THE INEVITABLE AND MAKING THE RESULTING MESS THAT WILL COME EVEN BIGGER!!
Yep, letting these financial companies fail will be like dominoes, because so many of them are on rediculously shaky ground... however it needs to happen, and trying to prevent that pain, will only draw it out longer and make it worse in the long run.
The Piper’s going to be paid, and hopefull the folks behind it will be brought to justice, but since the Countrywide CEO could pump and dump $1/2 a billion with impunity, I won’t be holding my breath.
Shakespeare had it wrong, first you kill all the investment bankers.
hahahaha.. not when 1.3 Trillion in assets is mostly paper assets that no one can even effectively value.
Paper wealth disappears as quickly as it appears, nice ride when it goes up, sucks eggs when it goes down. If you don’t have real money in your hand, you don’t have squat.
Welcome to Socialism.
I’ve got life insurance with those guys, so now my life is insured by the Federal Government. Don’t touch me!
At the rate of bailouts, I am not sure I am trading up by much.
Welcome to Oligarchy is more like it.
Look out below (kiss the good life goodbye) - an estimated $600 trillion of derivative, “counter party,” obligations to be set off in a chain reaction reminiscent of the big old bomb.
“Shakespeare had it wrong, first you kill all the investment bankers.”
lol at the time that was the nobility I would think, so maybe lawyers were as close as he could come to that part of the social pyramid without creating notable problems for himself?
counter-party risk is weird, with regard to your very reasonable philosophy. I think that, once you exist in a world where a system of trade settlement and clearance exists such as today, you are no longer able to suggest such a system as a viable option within those conditions.
Basically, the financial markets operate with the implicit understanding that the firm you are doing trades with today will be around later today, or in 1 or 3 or possibly 30+ days to settle the trade you do today. Literally, as long as all the paperwork is done, trade settlement is a ‘back-office’ issue, and one that never demands attention. Between today and the day the trade formally settles, you may have sold the bonds or stock you bought. The risk that your purchase will not properly settle due to the other side (counterparty) not meeting their delivery obligation is called counterparty risk. Imagine, a few days after doing a trade in XYZ stock, being called upand being toldyou were being DK’ed in your purchase of the stock (which you sold a bit later), yet the stock is up 20% since then. There is a huge loss on the books, yet who is responsible (aside from the firm that you did the trade with, who is presumably bankrupt)?
Who pays? A large trade will take your entire FIRM under with that kind of loss%.
A failure of the scale of Bear or AIG would create such a potential spaghetti of counter-party risk that additional, unrelated complications in our financial system would result as a direct consequence.
If you want a financial system free from both corpwelf and regulation, you might refer to systems in place pre-20th century, at least as an index, since i don’t think anything short of hard-currency or barter is free of regulation. You will be functioning on a letter-of-credit and hard-currency basis. 20th century medicine may be unobtainable, given the mass capital needs of producing it. Grain, coffee, tea, pork bellies, will need to be paid for in hard cash by an agent in each market city.
Well we taxpayers are out another 85 billion bucks and the futures are still showing -140 this morning.
LET THEM DIE
Seems pretty straightforward. If these liability policies are deemed worthless you can watch the Great Depression unfold before your very eyes. AIG is a partner to almost every refinery transaction that takes place. You want in the refinery to do work? Provide insurance. No insurance, no access. No access, no products and services. The chain reaction could have been something to behold.
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