{"id":241,"date":"2009-09-30T10:14:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-30T14:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intuitiveinvestor.com\/web\/?p=241"},"modified":"2018-08-22T20:16:39","modified_gmt":"2018-08-23T00:16:39","slug":"the-toll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/2009\/09\/30\/the-toll\/","title":{"rendered":"The toll"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Yesterday the International Monetary Fund (IMF) disclosed its estimate of future bank losses due to the BURSTING of the mortgage bubble. The number: $1.5 trillion. Not exactly chump change. This amount is, however, $600 billion less than its April forecast. The reduction in the estimated losses is due almost entirely to a rise in the value of securities held by banks. Meaning that the estimated losses could still climb higher if securities values fall again.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">But, and this truly is the back end of financial institutions and the point of the post, the IMF projects that when all is said and done from the financial crisis that total losses will be approximately $3.4 trillion! And that folks is the toll from unscrupulous, or just plain lazy, financial decision making. Makes me wanna spit! Let&#8217;s put that figure of $3.4 BIG ONES in perspective, shall we?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">There are <span id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_0\" class=\"blsp-spelling-corrected\">approximately<\/span> 6.78 billion people on the planet currently (source: <span id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_1\" class=\"blsp-spelling-error\">wikipedia<\/span>). That puts the amount of losses per global <span id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_2\" class=\"blsp-spelling-error\">capita<\/span> at: $500.93. That sounds like a small amount of money, but when you consider that the income per global <span id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_3\" class=\"blsp-spelling-error\">capita<\/span> is approximately $8,579 (source: World Bank) then the loss per <span id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_4\" class=\"blsp-spelling-error\">capita<\/span> is about 5.8% of total income. While that sounds like a small amount, it&#8217;s as if the bankers of the world got together and decided to raise taxes worldwide by 5.8%. Ouch! That is a big figure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">But let&#8217;s be realistic here. Most all of that $3.4 trillion loss is being felt in the G-20 countries, not in <span id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_5\" class=\"blsp-spelling-error\">countries<\/span> like Burundi where the per <span id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_6\" class=\"blsp-spelling-error\">capita<\/span> GDP is $140. The 2009 population of the G-20 countries (actually 19 countries &#8211; you learn something new every day) is 4,168,894,000. So that makes the per capital loss in the G-20 $815.56. Ouch! Per <span id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_7\" class=\"blsp-spelling-error\">capita<\/span> GDP in the G-20 was $11,142.96 in 2008 (source: <span id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_8\" class=\"blsp-spelling-error\">Wikipedia<\/span>), making the percentage loss of income 7.3%.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Another way to look at this is that worldwide total GDP in 2008 was $60,689,812,000,000. In 2008 worldwide GDP growth was 3.1% (source: CIA <span id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_9\" class=\"blsp-spelling-error\">factbook<\/span>), or $1.9 trillion. So the loss from the financial crisis of $3.4 trillion has effectively wiped out 2 years worth of worldwide economic growth (3.4 \/ 1.9 = 1.8, or ~ 2 years). However, it&#8217;s not my belief that the losses <span id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_10\" class=\"blsp-spelling-corrected\">suffered<\/span> by banks were actual losses of economy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">The losses, while real in dollar terms, were ephemeral in <em>real<\/em> economic terms. In other words, that $3.4 trillion was illusory economic growth. Because mortgages and real estate do not make up the entire economy and only a portion of it, this means that many, many years worth of GDP growth had a huge proportion that was unreal and due to extraordinarily cheap money (thank you Central Bankers &#8211; NOT!). The mortgage bubble began inflating around 2004 and began bursting in 2007. So approximately 2\/3 of economic growth during those years was due to inflation and was bogus. And that ladies and gentlemen is The Toll.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">I think I am going to go vomit now!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Jason<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday the International Monetary Fund (IMF) disclosed its estimate of future bank losses due to the BURSTING of the mortgage bubble. The number: $1.5 trillion. Not exactly chump change. This amount is, however, $600 billion less than its April forecast. The reduction in the estimated losses is due almost entirely to a rise in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-the-blog","category-the-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}