Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Worst Case Playing Out, Quietly

While the Federal Government might have stepped in to bailout AIG, I think you have to consider this failure averted as a failure none the less. Nouriel Roubini predicted a cascade of failures and that is indeed what we're seeing, in spite of the fact that everyone is still trying to put lipstick on this pig. Lehman was tanking, they waited too long to try and find a dance partner. Merrill Lynch got gobbled up by nobody's favorite bank and legislation author, Bank of America. AIG has fallen. Only the government bailout prevents this story from truly sounding like what it is. And oh yea, Fannie and Freddie got bailed out last week. Now, we see Morgan Stanley taking a lesson from the Lehman Brothers failure. They appear to be looking for a meger partner/buyer before their balance sheet completely tanks. The day of the large investment banks is certainly beginning to wane. How the current situation can be viewed as anything other than the worst case scenario is impossible, yet the mainstream media continues to take a myopic view in its reporting.

1 comment:

Pat R said...

from a historical point of view, it's hard to object to the government's mass bailouts since similar debt-producing methods were put into action to bring the U.S. out of the Depression... our economy has been supported and driven by debt ever since