by wisconsin_cur » Thu 06 Mar 2008, 03:16:07
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('LoneSnark', 'W')ait, if banks are going to fail in the near future, should they at least not be rediculously profitable right now? Looking at the list of the top 10 banks in North America, all of them declared post-write-off profits in the multi-billions last year.
So, again; if banks are still profitable, how can they fail?
To put it another way, which company is most at risk: General Motors, or Toyota?
1. You could ask the Fed chairman, he has gone on the record saying that banks are expected to fail.
Link2. If you are just talking about the large banks, I guess you would have to ask the heads of large investment groups that see risk in
Citibank?
3. Beyond that I guess we would have to look around at how everyone has been sleeping with everyone else's risk through the credit derivitive swap, something I do not even pretend to understand. But Buffett (not some liberal arts geek on the internet)called them a "mega risk"
Link$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')ome derivatives contracts, Mr Buffett says, appear to have been devised by "madmen".
He warns that derivatives can push companies onto a "spiral that can lead to a corporate meltdown", like the demise of the notorious hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management in 1998.
Large amounts of risk have become concentrated in the hands of relatively few derivatives dealers ... which can trigger serious systemic problems
Derivatives also pose a dangerous incentive for false accounting, Mr Buffett says.
The profits and losses from derivates deals are booked straight away, even though no actual money changes hand. In many cases the real costs hit companies only many years later. So I guess we are facing a risk that can stand up and kill you with little warning.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')his can result in nasty accounting errors. Some of them spring from "honest" optimism. But others are the result of "huge-scale fraud", and Mr Buffett points to the US energy market, which relied for most of its deals on derivatives trading and resulted in the collapse of Enron.
Berkshire Hathaway, the investment group led by Mr Buffett, is pulling out of the market, closing down the derivatives trading subsidiary it bought as part of a huge reinsurance company a few years ago.