Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Insolvency Isn't Readily Observable...Until It Is

Overnight deposits at the BCE are at all time highs and the collateral posted at the BCE is of dubious quality at best. European banks are still under capitalized and are hoarding liquidity when what they need is more capital / less leverage. The CEE is further from, not closer to an agreement on a Fiscal Union, Greece is a walking corpse. Economic growth in the Eurozone is screeching to a halt, etc., etc.


Taken in isolation, these are interesting, if not worrisome data points. Combined in a complex evolving system these anecdotes could provide the catalyst and / or accerlant for a potentially very negative outcome (or not).  But maybe we should take Pascal's advice and stop worrying about the probabilities of the various outcomes and start focusing on the consequences of an improbable but very negative outcome.  Maybe it's time to weigh and not to count. It's a bit like the difference between capital (solvency) and liquidity.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Followers