AutomaticEarth: It's not like Japan has one and the US has the other: America has both zombie banks AND zombie homeowners. Plus a lot of zombie unemployed, Wal-Mart greeters and burgerflippers, and I'm not all that sure it doesn't have a zombie government too.
HTML clipboard
Why Are Distressed Homeowners Still Paying Their Mortgage? Japan struggled for 20 years with "zombie banks"—so called because their debts, if properly recognized, made them insolvent. Here in America, we have millions of zombie homeowners. Why is this any better?
What drives the US economy today is zombie money.
One part is the keystrokes that make up TARP, stimulus and quantitative easing, the other is the funny accounting that allows the gamblers to pretend they didn't lose their wagers.
One part is the keystrokes that make up TARP, stimulus and quantitative easing, the other is the funny accounting that allows the gamblers to pretend they didn't lose their wagers.
When the banks go belly-up so does the real economy.
Then again, the only way to prevent a banking collapse is to actively make the real economy collapse. And even that prevention can only be just temporary.
Then again, the only way to prevent a banking collapse is to actively make the real economy collapse. And even that prevention can only be just temporary.
'This is the biggest fraud in the history of the capital markets' When we had the financial crisis, the first thing the banks did was run to Congress and ask for accounting relief. They asked to be able to avoid pricing this stuff at the price where people would buy them. So no one can tell you the size of the hole in these balance sheets. We've thrown a lot of money at it. TARP was just the tip of the iceberg. We've given them guarantees on debts, low-cost funding from the Fed. But a lot of these mortgages just cannot be saved. Had we acknowledged this problem in 2005, we could've cleaned it up for a few hundred billion dollars. But we didn't. Banks were lying and committing fraud, and our regulators were covering them and so a bad problem has become a hellacious one.
The most positive spin we can put on it is that nothing has changed, nothing has been solved, in the past 2-3 years. And that's not all: as Ms. Tavakoli points out, problems like these don't go to sleep, they get worse if you don't solve them. And that's why we find ourselves where we are today. It's also why I leave open the possibility that the US has a zombie government.
We injected drugs worth 300% of our GDP straight into our veins
America has defined itself as a society of collective "drug people", pushers, addicts and associates, with our drug of choice being debt. We happily injected drugs worth 300% of our GDP straight into our veins, and made our international dealers filthy rich in the process. The constant influx of drugs into our bodies made us feel super-human, as we were instantaneously able to afford TVs, computers, cars and homes with the swipe of a card and the flick of a pen. Of course, as any regular drug user can attest, the human biological system becomes increasingly tolerant to the jolts of external chemicals and requires ever-larger doses to achieve the same effects.
America has defined itself as a society of collective "drug people", pushers, addicts and associates, with our drug of choice being debt. We happily injected drugs worth 300% of our GDP straight into our veins, and made our international dealers filthy rich in the process. The constant influx of drugs into our bodies made us feel super-human, as we were instantaneously able to afford TVs, computers, cars and homes with the swipe of a card and the flick of a pen. Of course, as any regular drug user can attest, the human biological system becomes increasingly tolerant to the jolts of external chemicals and requires ever-larger doses to achieve the same effects.
The economy rapidly became saturated with debt, since economic actors needed to take on more and more debt to simply pay off previous debts and maintain their current level of activity. In 2007-08, the private debt servicing costs overwhelmed the "high" produced from this mostly unproductive debt, in the form of artificially elevated asset prices and revenue streams, and the national body had no more financial capacity to absorb additional drugs.
With no more access to their drug of choice after a decades-long binge, the addicts began going through severe withdrawal. The drug-induced mentality of happiness, trust and tolerance was quickly replaced with collective feelings of sickness, fear and resentment.
With no more access to their drug of choice after a decades-long binge, the addicts began going through severe withdrawal. The drug-induced mentality of happiness, trust and tolerance was quickly replaced with collective feelings of sickness, fear and resentment.
