Leverage by the numbers

Rolfe talks leverage:

This is the story of the housing crisis, the banking crisis and the global financial meltdown. Everyone, everywhere was levered to the hilt, using piles of borrowed money to make leveraged bets on everything from real estate, to stocks, to currencies, to bonds, to companies themselves (LBOs), etc. With so many people maxing out leverage to drive returns, all it takes is a small decline in asset prices for all of them to go bust. Unfortunately, the decline in asset prices isn’t going to be small. Consequently, the value of equity capital will continue to get hammered.