Monday, December 13, 2010

How Bad WAS It in 10/08??


My son-in-law was taking his MBA at UW-Madison when his prof pointed out that the Fed's balance-sheet had suddenly skyrocketed.

This is another representation of the same event but includes 'other' borrowers--which only enhances the drama while using real numbers.

It is reported that SecTreas said that there could be 'tanks in the streets' if the 10/08 situation was not acted on. He may have been right.

We remain skeptical about how long this "fix" can have positive effects, as does the BigPic contributor.

2 comments:

J. Strupp said...

History will look well upon Ben Bernanke regarding the events of fall 2008. Hank Paulson too. Actually, GW should get a great deal of kudos too (good god I hate writing that).

Monetary policy/crisis containment was not even close to perfect during Sept. 2008. The AIG debacle was tragic mistake that cost us big time. But these people did amazing things under unimaginable pressure. The aftermath might not be what we'd hoped for (finreg.) but that was later on.

There were no Twin Towers that came down in 2008 so the drama of the crisis was less "visual", but there's no question that if we had Hoover/Mellon reborn at the helm, it would have made the events of 9-11 look like fairy tale.

Dad29 said...

FinReg was another political 'horse which was supposed to be a camel'.

I'm still very, very skeptical about continuing life-support for Citi (among others), but we'll see.