It is, however, incredible that, despite 6 months having passed since Bear Stearns hit the rocks, there still is no special resolution regime for investment banks in the US. The US Secretary of the Treasury and the responsible parties in the US Congress should be taken away and shot after a fair trial for this dereliction of duty.
While desperate plans are being made now in New York to somehow save Lehman from collapsing catastrophically, stacked up behind them are Washington Mutual, Wachovia, AIG, and Merrill, all of whom are having extremely serious financial problems.
That an Op-Ed in the Financial Times should pointblank say Sec. Paulson is guilty of dereliction of duty is, obviously, quite extraordinary.
If Lehman falls in the wake of Freddie, Fanny and Bear, do you think the markets will wake up to the fact that risk can’t be factored out of the equation? Or do you think they’ll watch the government bail everyone out once again and they’ll go back to their mathematical economic models in the belief they can predict the future again?
http://theendisalwaysnear.blogspot.com/2008/09/prediction-black-swan-and-911.html
The government can’t bail everyone out. The amounts of money are too vast for even for them.