> RoMunn wrote: > today. Given that situation, the only "fair" thing to do is to let the > losers fail, as I was saying. Our key challenge should be to prevent the > failure of the losers from disrupting the overall system. >
As I've explained, you can't do that since the "losers" will take down the entire economy. It's simple numbers: * There are 8000 banks * 25 of them control 80% of banking * The failure of 1 of those 25 will take down the entire economy IF we made banks to "mark to market" (meaning we tell them they need to account for their assets at market prices, which right now means $0 for a lot of their assets) But the government recently told banks they don't have to mark-to-market. In other words the system hasn't imploded because: 1.) The government is the lender-of-last-resort and has provided failed banks (like Citi) with the capital they need to continue to operate daily and 2.) Allowed banks to use the accounting trick of making up asset values rather than marking to market. When you see banks posting "profits" they're phantom profits based on fictitious numbers. And, of course, the banks are trying to fool you into thinking they can be considered individually because they don't want the government all up in their business. But the point is they CAN NOT be considered individually and that's not because they were forced to take TARP money, it's because they're a linked part of a chain and if any link breaks they whole chain fails. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;207172674;29440083;f Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:295435 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
