7.2 and heading for 20!! IMHO!
I agree. The feds had to send and print 11 trillion to the insolvent banks and insurance companies who loss money when they used leveraging to buy residential mortgage notes. That is why the collapse came so rapidly. Now due to bad retail sales and store closings as retailers contract or go out of business. Plus hotels have high vacancy rates and office space vacancy rates are rising, commercial real estate mortgages is the other financial losses the recently restored banks will get hit with. Figure another 10 trillion must be pumped by the feds back into the banks to prevent them from reverting back to insolvancy as the real estate mortgage market will collapse or take heavy losses. As companies loss value and consumer lose jobs and start to default on credit card loans, car loans, college loans and etc. The commercial real estate crisis will be followed by the aftermarket debt crisis. Credit card obligations, non home loans, the leverage buy out obligations in the after market (where the loan is sold to investors) also face imminent collapse because Wall Street also used leveraging to invest in these notes. Feds and Wall Street experts have no idea how large this market for debt is. Estimates range from 55 trillion to 1 quadrillion. If this market or a sizeable portion of it implodes due to defaults or devaluation, the feds will not have anything left to bail out the banks and insurance companies and the US/world financial system will breakdown. These two financial time bombs can end the US in 2009.