The Ten Trillion Dollar Black Swan

The American Thinker reports:

You leverage your firm 30 or 40 to 1. That means (public school graduates) that you have a billion dollars of your own money. Then you use your "strong" balance sheet (no silly marking to market) to borrow another $39 billion. You loan out $35 billion of it and pay the other $4 billion to yourself or other co-conspirators. Your risk managers fire off e-mails telling you that if housing prices decline by as little as 5% to 10%, the entire firm is lost. What a bunch of academic worry-warts! Everyone knows that housing prices can never go down. Maybe one intrepid risk analyst (who earns less that 1% of your well deserved compensation) has the temerity to remind you that the latest reports show an excess supply of more than 2 million homes nationwide as compared to people who need a home to live in. After firing her, you console yourself with some caviar and truffles washed down with a $10,000 bottle of wine.

There was a time when the greed factor cited above was balanced by its equally famous sibling, the fear factor. Before 1970, investment banks and other NYSE members had to be individuals or general partnerships. When they converted to publicly traded corporations the risk was transferred to the shareholders but the rewards still went disproportionately to the senior managers. Why is that important? When that e-mail warning of the risk hit the CEO's computer, he could ignore it, knowing that he had accumulated tens or even hundreds of million dollars in prior years. At worst, he could retire comfortably. Had he been the managing partner, the firm's creditors could go after every penny he had to his name. Say goodbye to Mister Greed and hello to Mister Fear!

Some financial stocks may takes years to recover.