Bancopalypse 2.0 – Some Disturbing Figures From The Looming Financial Crisis
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,
In early 1870, the Kingdom of Prussia and French Empire were about to go to war.
It was one of countless conflicts between the dozens of European kingdoms and empires throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, and this one was over before it even started.
Prussia’s military might was legendary. They had recently beaten the pants off of Austria and Denmark, and they’d go on to neutralize or capture over 80% of French soldiers within a matter of months, while losing just 2% of their own.
Very few wars have been so one-sided.
And yet despite its nearly unparalleled military successes and clear dominance in European politics, Prussia lacked something critical: financial power.
Prussia’s economy was robust and healthy. But businesses across all German kingdoms depended almost exclusively on the British banking system to conduct international trade.
It was similar to how nearly the entire world depends on Wall Street mega-banks today for global trade. Germany lacked its own strong financial system.
So on March 10, 1870, King Wilhelm I of Prussia (soon to be German Emperor) granted a banking license to a trio of local entrepreneurs and gave them explicit instructions to establish a banking powerhouse.
And that’s exactly what they did. The bank was called Deutsche Bank, and it eventually grew into one of the largest banks in the world.
Deutsche Bank has seen a lot in its years; multiple world wars and the devastation of Europe. Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic. Nazi Germany.
The bank even outlasted its own country, as the Kingdom of Prussia was formally abolished in 1947.
But as the world learned in 2008 when the 158-year old investment bank Lehman Brothers went bust, even giant, centuries-old financial institutions can collapse.
Banking is such a bizarre industry when you think about it.
Regular, everyday people like you and I fork over our hard-earned savings to banks.
They take our money and do some of the most insane things with it… whether loaning it to jobless, homeless people, or buying the negative-yielding debts of bankrupt governments.
You and I would never do anything so foolish with our own funds. Yet we hand everything over to banks and give them full license to engage in this madness.
And even when their decisions blow up and they go to the taxpayer with hat in hand for a bailout, they prove that they have memories like goldfish.
Today, banks are up to the same tricks as they were 10 years ago, except they’ve taken things to a whole new level.
And Deutsche Bank is leading the charge.
One of the major issues in the 2008 crisis was that banks were over-leveraged and had very thin levels of capital.
In other words, the banks’ rainy-day reserve funds as a percentage of their overall balance sheets were extremely low, so even a small loss in their investment portfolios would cause financial Armageddon.
That’s precisely what happened.
Lehman Brothers famously had a capital ratio of less than 3% of its assets. So when the value of its assets fell by more than 3%, the bank was finished.
Well-capitalized …read more
Source: Bancopalypse 2.0 – Some Disturbing Figures From The Looming Financial Crisis
