The losses keep mounting. We started with the premise this was limited to 14% of a the $800 Billion Dollar Sub-prime Market or One Hundred Twelve Billion ($112,000,000,000) dollars...yes sir, that is a big B!!!
But then we were told the comptroller of the currency had included those infamous Option Arms only sold to those A to A+credit borrowers but loaded in the most insidious negative Amortization schedule (putting many borrowers under water as the values drop and the rates have adjusted) in the list of troubled loans. These loans were booked by depository institutions, yup, those are banks, and they believe this could total an additional three hundred fourty Billion ($340,000,000,000) dollars in troubled or delinquent loans with no exit given the under water status of this batch of growing problems.
Now we have an analyst that is estimating the total cost to the US banking, Mortgage and Wall Street Conduits and Insurance Companies could cost us six hundred Billion ($600,000,000,000) Dollars. This does not include Commercial CDO's. Since the entire market is Four Trillion and shrinking, that represents an astounding 15% of the housing market or nearly one in six mortgage dollars to be wiped out. That number is a much larger number than we experienced in the great depression, but we had very humane
community banking and a lot of George Baileys in Bedford Falls Communities working together, not these heartless "serviced in India loans!!!"
Did you know that the economy's Gross Domestic Product grew 4.2% in the third quarter and dropped to a worrisome .6 or only 6/10th of one percent in the fourth and Christmas season quarter? Want to guess at where we are at just now at this point in the First Quarter? Wonder why the feds cut the discount to 3%? Wonder why they think they need to cut some more? DO you wonder if it will really help a whole lot? If you are 110% Loan to Market Value, you are stuck!!! And the more the rates go down the lower the dollar drops and the higher the cost of imported oil. Is this a conundrum??? Are we chasing our tails into a Depression? Ask your grandmothers and grandfathers what it was like and hunker down for the worst ride of our lives!!!
Could this be an another example of 9 Testimonies fullfillment when the Grey Haired Prophet proclaimed the world's leading businessmen would be "struggling in vain to put business back on a sound footing" E.G. White
Think about it and then read 9 Testimonies if you wonder what you should be doing as events begin to unfold right before your eyes...
Gailon Arthur Joy
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Credit-crunch losses to total $600 billion AIG is just one financial-services company of many that have been slammed by the credit mess over the past few months, and one expert says the total losses for the industry could reach $600 billion.
That's billion, with a "B."
Banks and brokerages companies together could lose $350 billion, more than half of UBS (UBS, news, msgs) strategist Geraud Charpin's eye-popping estimate; the group has written down $160 billion since the credit crisis started to squeeze the markets.
"We have to recognize the risk that the economy will suffer more damage than what consensus suggests. All the investment schemes that have been built on the basis of a strong and resilient economic backdrop have to be unwound/scaled down," Charpin wrote in a note to clients this morning.
UBS, Merrill Lynch (MER, news, msgs) and Citigroup (C, news, msgs) have already written down billions because of losses related to the meltdown of the subprime-mortgage market. "
Charley Blain of Market Dispatches