mlimberg

Will the Next Banking Crisis Originate in Europe?

And now, something real important....

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Among the nightmares lurking around the corner for the already battered housing and credit markets would be a meltdown at mortgage financing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Although few are predicting an imminent need for a bailout just yet, credit rating agency Standard & Poor's recently placed an estimated price tag on this worst case scenario -- $420 billion to $1.1 trillion of taxpayer's money.
This dwarfs how much it cost to help banks during the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980's and early 1990's. That cost taxpayers about $250 billion in today's dollars.

Has anyone added all the lost money and compaired that to the perceived worth of the world? What % of the beleive wealth of the world is the loss we have seen and the loss not yet reported? At some point we may have spent all our wealth?

Time to go back to the gold standard....

Housing Bubble and Real Estate Market Tracker

At the peak of the market in 1991, property in Japan was worth four times the value of all property in the US – on paper anyway.
Buoyed by low interest rates, financiers introduced the concept of intergenerational loans, and eased credit standards as a way of helping people attain the booming prices.
Every day investors were caught up in the mania. Many salarymen, fearing they'd be priced out of the market as it continued higher, bought properties they knew they couldn't afford, in the hope that price increases would wipe away their folly.
Between 1989 and 1990 the Bank of Japan became worried that the property boom was becoming a bubble and took preventative steps, tightening interest rates. The bubble popped.
The resulting bust saw housing prices fall for 14 years in a row, and prices retreated as far as 60 per cent in Japan's capital cities.
The stockmarket crashed 80 per cent, consumers slowed their spending and the economy plunged into a prolonged recession.
Daisuke Sato was one bloke I met who was caught in the crash. He bought an apartment in 1990 for (roughly) $500,000, and 17 years later the pad is worth only $280,000.
Sato has a constant reminder of the mania – a massive mortgage that needs to be paid back regardless of the price of his home.