Is the American economy too big to fail?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/weekinreview/20goodman.html?partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

by robg • 18 years ago

13 23 18 years ago

nytimes.com

gaius2• 18 years ago

Was the Titanic too big to sink?

immad• 18 years ago

Was the British Empire too big to fall

Was the world too big to get polluted :)

ajkirwin• 18 years ago

Has there been an analysis of what will happen to the 'common man' should these banks fail? In plain speak?

By which I mean:

Will the price of my food and gas go up? Will I pay more for the rent on my apartment? Will I have to pay more if I want to buy a house?

etcetera.

ardit33• 18 years ago

a scary thought, is to look at Argentina, when the country defaulted its imf loans, had to unpeg their currnecy to the dollar, and the value of their currency went down the drain overnight. Lots of unrests, people lost their life savings (well, they were worth a lot less).

mdasen3• 18 years ago

The most obvious impact will be to the thousands of people they employ. They will be without a job.

In more vague terms, it's really difficult to consider how wide-ranging the impacts will be. Banking is actually really important. It allows us to overcome capitalization gaps. In a metaphor that will go over well here: Say you have a great idea, but you need 10, high-quality 2-U physical servers to do it (and the room to put them in). Well, that's going to run you probably around $50,000 - before you have any money. VC steps in and you all get rich.

Likewise, without banking, it becomes hard for you to buy a home because you can't pull the money together. Who cares? You rent? Well, it becomes harder for the person who owns that building you're in to buy it and that causes rent to spike in a way that would seem unimaginable. Likewise, the farmer who needs cash to live on until harvest can't get it and so they have to charge more for their goods, etc.

The price of everything goes up because the cost to cover those capitalization gaps has risen incredibly. Worse, we'd face shortages - large ones.

Beyond that, Banks increase the velocity of money. Basically, the velocity of money is the time it is between when you get $1 in your pocket and when that $1 is spent on something else. At first, this looks like the Republican you should buy to be patriotic argument. That's where Banks come in to actually help. Banks allow you to get that money back into the economy without wasting it on useless things. For example, I inherit $50,000. I could spend it on stupid purchases that I don't want. That might boost things in a very short-term way. OR, I could put that $50,000 in the bank and the bank can then loan the company that needs servers that $50,000 and they are creating real value and growth in the economy. So, banks make the economy more efficient by keeping money circulating even when you have no use for your money. By doing this on a large enough scale (with certain safeguards), banks can guarantee you access to your money while improving economic efficiency (once your server company hits it big, you'll have lots of money you don't know what to do with when I want to remove money).

The issue we're seeing right now is that we got a little too ambitious. We wanted to open home-ownership to people that probably couldn't afford it. Now we're in a bad place where people have deposited money, but where the bank has lent it probably won't be able to pay back - the bank is facing a capitalization gap.

We should all hope that this is just a little blip - and it's unlikely that it will become worse than that. People are panicking right now because there is the potential that we're hitting a, say 10%, gap that can't be covered. When the gap is that small, banks can usually eat it in the long run (rather than go under) because it just isn't enough to kill them. Likewise, the government might help out if it's larger because if the banking system goes under, consumer prices would rise at a rate unimaginable to anyone who didn't live during the gas crisis in the 70s - but this would apply to all goods.

This could be bad, but there is enough strength in these institutions that even as pieces crumble, there is too much good in them to completely die - I hope.

bilbo0s4• 18 years ago

This is interesting. Why do you think the prices of homes will go up and not have significant downward pressures in a credit restricted environment? Or am I reading your post wrong?

PS - I voted it up by the way because everything else strikes me as spot on.

bilbo0s4• 18 years ago

Ardit33 is right. Generally not a good idea to welch on a bet in global financial markets. Argentina is still not back.

The interesting thing though is if Fannie and Freddy fail the rent on your apartment will probably go down, and houses will be worth less. Of course, you will practically need to pay for the house in cash in the worst case scenario. Think permissively inexpensive homes, that no one but the French and the Germans can afford, if that makes sense to you. It is the opposite of what we have had the past 10 years, prohibitively expensive homes that every one could afford. I'm speaking in terms of values and not dollars though.

olefoo2• 18 years ago

> prohibitively expensive homes that every one could afford

erm. I _think_ you meant that the people were borrowing more than they could afford to buy overpriced homes. But it sounds like you were saying that everyone was fabulously wealthy and homes, though not cheap, were affordable.

sosueme2• 18 years ago

http://goldismoney.info/forums/showthread.php?goto=newpost&#...

The documentary divided into twelve parts tells the story of how debt combined with political corruption impoverished a nation that was once so rich that the expression "Wealthy as an Argentine" was once in common use throughout the world.

When the USA took on trillions in debt starting in the early 1980s, did we enter a Dante's hell as Argentina did when it took on its debt under a military dictatorship in the 1970s? Is it only a matter of time before US debts lead inexorably to currency crisis, inflation, and political chaos? The story will strike North Americans as uncomfortably familiar.

davidw• 18 years ago

And as predicted ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=245275 ) here come the "gold standard" links...

olefoo2• 18 years ago

Thus illustrating the gresham's law of social news or something like it.

Blacklists, whitelists, gatekeepers, keyword vector analysis, are there any architectural approaches to delivering 'news you can use' that haven't been tried several times already?

sosueme2• 18 years ago

Excuse me, where was gold standard discussed anywhere here?

pmorici• 18 years ago

This begs the question of why in the heck did they let it get to big to fail. and what are they going to do to shrink it down so next time they can let it scum to market forces.

fallentimes• 18 years ago

No.

nickb• 18 years ago

Such incredible hubris.

jonas_b• 18 years ago

I think american are getting a bit too anxious. The trend the last hundred years have been that we talk less about depression and more about recessions. In fact, if the worst thing that could happen is that a couple of banks close down and a couple of millions have to start renting, well, that isn't really so bad. In my view, that's a picture of a pretty resillient economy.

ltbarcly• 18 years ago

Questions like this are really questions about words.

Was the Roman Empire too big to fail? Sortof, in that it so thoroughly changed how people thought and lived that even 2000 years later we are very obviously Roman in many of our laws, habits, and worldview. The key is that the ruling families of Rome are nowhere to be found as such.

So yes, the American economy will probably continue in much the same form for the next thousand years or so all over the world. Our huge amounts of natural resources, talent, and farmable land aren't going anywhere. The real question, the one coded into the title of this post, is "Is America influential enough to take a huge hit without the people who are currently very wealthy having to give up their money bins." and hopefully, for the rest of us who don't have money bins and can only become wealthy through our own work, and thus depend on a fair system, the answer is no.

gills• 18 years ago

I don't know. Have Americans forgotten how to work hard? This article is a year late, which seems to be fashionable these days in the financial world.

Is the American economy too big to fail?

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