S&P says total losses from RMBS, CDOS for financial institutions will eventually reach more than $265 bln - Reuters
A billion here, a billion there, it adds up eventually.... that seems to be about a half percent of the annual global gross national product, any ideas on how our brilliant leaders are going to sort that out for us all?? Somebody was on the good side of all those contracts, maybe they could be taxed for it to help with the bailout...
GS would never allow their profits to be taxed like that. The solution is just to buy GS before $200 billion earnings BLOW-OUT!
The numbers seem big but in 1998, banks estimated their losses in Russia ( after the default) to be $100bn. At that time global gnp was $32trn. So it was 0.3. Given that that was Russia ( with some carry over and a similar amount lost in the Asian problems in late 97 thru early 98), do you think a 0.5% fall will really hurt? It didn't hurt in 98. Okay markets were down circa 20% in 2.5 months but they recovered okay by years end.
yeah i thought it was believed that it might end up being closer to the $500 billion number. ugly stuff either way.
I wonder if S&P is behind the curve. I think the banks have written off stuff based on ABX indices - not based on rating. I could be wrong.