For the third time in the post-war period, the United States banking system is insolvent. When President Barack Obama's economic advisor Paul Volcker chaired the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors in 1981, the collapse of emerging-market borrowers left the big American banks on the verge of bankruptcy. The collapse of the junk-bond market in 1990 followed by the real estate market in 1991 left the system insolvent once again. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/KA24Dj02.html
That was an interesting and informative read, thank you. Treasuries look to be in the early stages of rolling over and to me this is really the mother of all bubbles, when this one pops it really is game over.
US companies face a greater risk of liquidation because sources of finance to let them reorganise under the countryâs bankruptcy code are drying up in the global financial crisis. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a524770a-eb1c-11dd-bb6e-0000779fd2ac.html
The guys from Asia Times are usually over-dramatic but their articles are well-informative and researched. If you're there check out the Henry Liu and the Spengler articles as well.
Anybody interested in this topic will probably want to read Bigpicture's links to some good links on Credit Default Swaps as well, which has lots of interesting stats on the banking system: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/business/25gret.html?_r=2&ref=business http://us1.institutionalriskanalytics.com/pub/IRAstory.asp?tag=335 http://us1.institutionalriskanalytics.com/pub/IRAstory.asp?tag=336