“I’ve found that credit losses could peak at a level of $3.6 trillion for U.S. institutions, half of them by banks and broker dealers,” Roubini said at a conference in Dubai today. “If that’s true, it means the U.S. banking system is effectively insolvent because it starts with a capital of $1.4 trillion. This is a systemic banking crisis.”Note that he has the training to calculate this stuff, all I have is my gut.
My gut says that his prediction is optimistic, and as bearish as he has been, he has actually underestimated the scope of this problem by a bit so far.
By way of perspective, the US economy in 2007 was about $13-¾ trillion. This is a big number, though less than the roughly 8-½ trillion that the Treasury and the Fed have "lent" out in the past year or so.
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