Your Tuesday Morning Dose of Doom & Gloom

In the event of a euro banking crisis, brace yourself for unbraced American banks:

Personally, I’m most worried about the balance sheets of the really big banks. For example, in recently released highlights from its so-called living will, JPMorgan Chase & Co. revealed that $50 billion in losses could hypothetically bring down the bank. (All big banks must provide their regulators with a living will to show how they could be shut down in an orderly fashion if near default.)

JPMorgan’s total balance sheet is valued, under U.S. accounting standards, at about $2.3 trillion. But U.S. rules allow a more generous netting of derivatives — offsetting long with short positions between the same counterparties — than European banks are allowed. The problem is that the netting effect can be overstated because derivatives contracts often don’t offset each other precisely. Worse, when traders smell trouble at a bank that has taken on too much risk, they tend to close out their derivatives positions quickly, leaving supposedly netted contracts exposed.

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Weren’t we assured that our banks had gone through all the stress testing they needed to assure us there would be no more panics like 2008? Isn’t anybody in DC paying attention to this stuff?

Oh, well — at least Obama got health care passed.

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