More bad news
admin @ Apr 10
Just as things seemed to calm down a bit (Bear Stearns already seems like very old news) the International Monetary Fund announced it expects total losses of almost $1 trillion from the ongoing and increasingly global financial crisis.
Half of those massive losses will be borne by banks, and the rest by pension funds, hedge funds, insurance companies and other investors.
If there is good news, it is that the banks have taken most of their losses—about $200 billion with another $80 billion to come. The bad news, of course, is that much of the rest of the losses are still scattered around the markets.
The real bad news is the IMF's conclusion that there is real potential for a big hit to U.S. growth, on top of the recession that has already begun.
Here is the full report:
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/gfsr/2008/01/pdf/text.pdf
