No. I do believe that outrageous claims of hellfire based on notional values is stupid.
Is this why the Bear Stearns debacle occurred, because of purely imaginary notional funny money?
Bear and every other WS denizen is flying on collateralized borrowed money. There's nothing wrong with that until the counter parties freeze up. Why do they freeze up? Because of irrational fear. Once upon a time WS firms didn't have credit departments because it was all repo. Then Drysdale Securities blew up and couldn't make interest payments on its repo book. Now WS has designated credit officers who have to approve repo counter parties - even though each transaction is delivery vs. payment and collateralize with government securities or something equivalent.
BSC is hardly the first debacle. Remember the dot com pop after the Fed started tightening, the Orange County, Cal blow up after the Fed tightened in 1994? The S&L crisis makes all this look like a picnic.
Is this why Bernanke and Paulson are sweating bullets?
Who says they are?
Do you honestly believe this?
What I believe is that the Armagedden idea is an endorphin release for a lot of petty people.
BSC is solvent and the rest of us are endorphin junkies. Whew. Glad we settled that little issue. Just take a little vacation, relax, detox and the whole problem will be over.
You are such a hoot. Everything is just fine in the world if finance, it's just all that "irrational fear" that's causing the crunchiness. Why, if we'd all just think happy thoughts, it would all go away!
And I say Bernanke and Paulson are sweating bullets, because I've been watching them speaking in public, and they are twitching, stuttering, shaking their heads involuntarily and giving every other known indication that they are indeed sweating bullets.
We petty folks just sit here tripping on our endorphins as the masters of the universe show us how Armagedden is really done.