A picture is worth a thousand words.
Source: Office of the Comptroller of Currency, as of 31 Dec 2009
Source: Office of the Comptroller of Currency, as of 31 Dec 2009The banking system melted down at late in 2008, because weird, opaque transactions like Credit Default Swaps made pricing risk pretty difficult. So what did the shiny new
As homework and for extra credit, graph the campaign contributions of these same five organizations and their corporate officers by party donated to.
And just for that final frisson of terror, let me put that figure of $206 Trillion in perspective: it's fourteen times the size of the US GDP.
Dried food, water, and ammo, folks. The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight is running things right towards a cliff.
Via A Large Regular.
Around the time in 2008 this pile of excrement was hitting the air mover, the guys who had been predicting it for 3 years were saying that they estimated the total amount of leverage was a quadrillion dollars.
ReplyDeleteNow imagine a block 1/100 of the diameter of the tire it's trying to stop from rolling over it. Think it's going to hold it?
I do have to wonder how that graph compares to a similar graph of the size of those 5 banks vs "everyone else", though.
ReplyDeleteThey hold an overwhelming share of the derivatives market. Big whoop, considering their overwhelming share of the banking market, say I.
Of course, it's well worth questioning _why_ they hold such an overwhelming share of the banking market. I mean, some of that was pre-crash mergers, but a lot of activity has gone on since the crash that specifically _pushed_ these banks to get even bigger.