How The System Could Collapse

This is an excerpt from Martin Weiss' newsletter Money and Markets
Martin Weiss, PhD

Here's the great dilemma: The tangled web of bets and debts linking each of these giant players to the other is so complex and so difficult to unravel, it may be impossible for the Fed to protect the financial system from paralysis if just one major player defaults. And if Lehman is not that player, the next one will be.

To understand why, put yourself in the shoes of a senior derivatives trader at a big firm like Morgan Stanley (which has $7.1 trillion in derivatives on its books and about $10 billion in capital).

Let's say you're personally responsible for $500 billion in derivatives contracts with Bank A, essentially betting that interest rates will decline.

By itself, that would be a huge risk. But you're not worried because you have a similar bet with Bank B that interest rates will go up.

It's like playing roulette, betting on both black and red at the same time. One bet cancels the other, and you figure you can't lose.

Here's what happens next ...

> Interest rates go up, reflecting a 2% decline in bond prices.
> You lose your bet with Bank A.
> But, simultaneously, you win your bet with Bank B.
> So, in normal circumstances, you'd just take the winnings from one to pay off the losses with the other — a non-event.

But here's where the whole scheme blows up and the drama begins:

Bank B suffers large mortgage-related losses. It runs out of capital. It can't raise additional capital from investors. So it can't pay off its bet. Suddenly and unexpectedly ...

You're on the hook for your losing bet.

But you can't collect on your winning bet.

You grab a calculator to estimate the damage. But you don't need one — 2% of $500 billion is $10 billion. Simple.

Bottom line: In what appeared to be an everyday, supposedly "normal" set of transactions ... in a market that has moved by a meager 2% ... you've just suffered a loss of ten billion dollars, wiping out all of your firm's capital.

Now, you can't pay off your bet with Bank A — or any other losing bet, for that matter.

Bank A, thrown into a similar predicament, defaults on its bets with Bank C, which, in turn, defaults on bets with Bank D. Bank D has bets with you as well ... it defaults on every single one ... and it throws your firm even deeper into the hole.

So now do you understand why bookies belong to the Mafia and why gamblers who welsh on their debts wind up at the bottom of the East River? It's because defaulting gamblers are a grave threat to the entire system, just like Lehman Brothers is today.