2010-04-09reuters.com

It’s notable that Alan Greenspan says 15% tangible equity would have been a good cushion for Lehman and Bear. Extrapolated across other major banks, the 15% figure implies they’d have to raise nearly $900 billion, a truly stupendous figure.

The bankers themselves used to consider anything less than approximately 15% reserves (6-to-1 leverage) insane. Now they've found something better: a regime of virtually no reserves, with the general public to underwrite them to eliminate all of the consequences, while they capture the outsized short-term profits.



Comments:

tvsterling at 20:45 2010-04-10 said:
What a sweet deal. We the taxpayers are the nation's bank now but the lazy elites get all the profits. Why not just eliminate these middlemen? Now we have to go past legislating morality & have to legislate sane business practices too. To be fair to the megabanks; they are masking their leverage in the name of TRANSPARENCY. We are bring SO UNFAIR. After all they are creating wealth. Just ask anyone whose unemployment just ran out. Permalink

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