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Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Inside Financial Crises

Two articles, worth the read.

Bruner.

Warren Buffett once said that you don't know who's swimming naked until the tide goes out. Right now, the tide is going out fast, and there are a lot of naked swimmers - Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and AIG are just a few of them.

Until the tide begins to turn, we are in a race against time to reveal the extent of rot in the subprime loan market, before the crisis of confidence spills over into other markets and across the broader economy. Until then, keep your shorts on.


Crovitz

The lesson of previous credit crises is that the sooner new valuations are set for bank assets and liabilities, the sooner recovery begins.

The difficulty in establishing value suggests the need for more disclosure. ... Many of today's most mispriced financial instruments have no disclosure requirements.