Is Another Financial Crash Certain?

After reading this article, it would seem we are in serious financial trouble.

Why Another Financial Crash is Certain

Here is some excerpts. Look at some of the numbers the author quotes. I had not heard of number this high!

On August 9, 2007, an incident took place at a bank in France that touched-off a financial crisis that that would eventually wipe out more than $30 trillion in capital and thrust the world into the deepest slump since the Great Depression. The event was recounted in a speech by Pimco's managing director Paul McCulley, at the 19th Annual Hyman Minsky Conference on the State of the U.S. and World Economies. Here's an excerpt from McCulley's speech:

"If you have to pick a day for the Minsky Moment, it was August 9. And, actually, it didn’t happen here in the United States. It happened in France, when Paribas Bank (BNP) said that it could not value the toxic mortgage assets in three of its off-balance sheet vehicles, and that, therefore, the liability holders, who thought they could get out at any time, were frozen. I remember the day like my son’s birthday. And that happens every year. Because the unraveling started on that day. In fact, it was later that month that I actually coined the term “Shadow Banking System” at the Fed’s annual symposium in Jackson Hole.

“It was only my second year there. And I was in awe, and mainly listened for most of the three days. At the end....I stood up and (paraphrasing) said, ‘What’s going on is really simple. We’re having a run on the Shadow Banking System and the only question is how intensely it will self-feed as its assets and liabilities are put back onto the balance sheet of the conventional banking system.’”

Subprime was the spark that lit the fuse, but subprime wasn't big enough to bring down the whole financial system. That would take bigger ructions in the shadow banking system.  Here's an excerpt from an article by Nomi Prins which explains how much money was involved:

"Between 2002 and early 2008, roughly $1.4 trillion worth of sub-prime loans were originated by now-fallen lenders like New Century Financial. If such loans were our only problem, the theoretical solution would have involved the government subsidizing these mortgages for the maximum cost of $1.4 trillion. However, according to Thomson Reuters, nearly $14 trillion worth of complex-securitized products were created, predominantly on top of them, precisely because leveraged funds abetted every step of their production and dispersion. Thus, at the height of federal payouts in July 2009, the government had put up $17.5 trillion to support Wall Street's pyramid Ponzi system, not $1.4 trillion." ("Shadow Banking", Nomi Prins, The American Prospect)

Dodd-Frank – the financial reform act -- is riddled with loopholes and doesn't really resolve the central issues of loan quality, additional capital, or risk retention. Banks are still free to issue bogus mortgages to unemployed applicants with bad credit, just as they were before the meltdown.

President Barack Obama understands the basic problem, but he also knows that he won't be reelected without Wall Street's help.  That's why he promised to further reduce "burdensome" regulations in the Wall Street Journal just two weeks ago. His op-ed was intended to preempt the release of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission's (FCIC) report, which was expected to make recommendations for strengthening existing regulations. Obama torpedoed that effort by coming down on the side of big finance. Now, it's only a matter of time before another crash.

So, between $4 to $7 trillion vanished in a flash after Lehman Brothers blew up.

Ironically, the New York Fed doesn't even try to deny the source of the problem; deregulation. Here's what they say in the report: "Regulatory arbitrage was the root motivation for many shadow banks to exist."

What does that mean? It means that Wall Street knows that it's easier to make money by eliminating the rules....the very rules that protect the public from the predation of avaricious speculators.

The only way to fix the system is to regulate all financial institutions that act like banks.  No exceptions.

After reading the whole article you will see why we are still up to our eyes in trouble.

Prepare.....