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Sunday, September 21, 2008

Why are US Banks Failing??

Well, Hi Friends!
You all must be pretty acquainted with how the Wall Street fell down this week! Three out of the four pillars of Wall Street are no more.....Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanly, Merrill Lynch all have been doomed and the still standing tall Goldman Sachs is in no good shape either. But what has triggered all this crisis and why is it specifically aiming American Banks???

I have one reasonable proposition which explains the root cause. You see that US has a rule which says that If a Bank is investing in your business and supporting you with a loan regarding your property, business, capital etc., It owns the full responsibility for it. That means, lets say, You as an individual, wants to start a company and go to a US Bank and give your proposal and ask for a loan. The bank studies your idea and the market situation and the property rates and stuff like that and finally decides to accept your request. Suppose you take an approved loan of $10 Million.

Now, After running your business successful for say 2 years, you see that the property rates have fallen drastically and you are facing grave loss in your business due to global economic crisis. You calculate that your assets now stand at total of just say $2 Million. Now, You obviously can't run the business and are doomed. You go to the Bank with your keys and have grant them the responsibility saying, "I don't want to continue the business and am forfeiting any control, now its your responsibility!!". Now the bank is in a fix.

The customer, gets free from any responsibility after facing the loss as is and getting no more hassles. But the bank, according to law, must have given the loan with proper consideration and responsibility but now it cannot recover its loan value as the net value of the business (including property rates, assets etc.) itself have reduced.... So, the banks actually are facing this crisis, popularly called Sub-Prime Crisis and have substantially, eroded their capital and assets and are thus getting Bankrupt due to an over burgeoning effect vicious cycle of Global Economic Crisis!

Its nice of US to bail them out by giving whopping amounts of Money, but till when???? Well, as a matter of fact, you may be having a question, that why are Indian Banks immune to this! It actually has two reasons:-
1. Indian PSU Banks have no whatsoever relationship with any of the US Banks and thus are completely autonomous.
2. The other reason is the non-existence of any such, "Bank's Responsibility" rule in India :)
Indian Banks as a matter of fact, will keep asking you for the remaining $8 Million for your entire life and you would have to sell/mortgage your other properties against it, thereby securing the banks. But here, you don't have any security for yourself; This is just a dichotomy of the Coin which we need to handle!

So, Enough Economics, Bye for now :)

8 comments:

namita said...

Hi Rahul this is very good explanation even for any guy with no financial market knowledge like me.
Well the last line that Indian banks will nag you for the rest of your life for the $8 million is very true.
Lets just hope the crisis goes away.

Anonymous said...

It's undoubtedly very impressive.
Hoping for more..

Prateek Singh

Jitesh Sachdeva said...

You explained the whole thing in very lucid manner. Hoping for some more posts related to economics and finance for naive people like me :)

Mukul said...

second jitesh's opinion...nice explanations there

Anonymous said...

There is just 1 flaw in your explanation.In the US, its not like the banks are completely responsible. If someone for example, doesn't pay back his home loan (or mortgage as they call it in USA,I am not sure what the difference is), the property of that person undergoes foreclosure. In other words, its the bank's property now and is open for auction. The fact that led to the 'sub-prime' crisis was that the property rates went down so much that this property that was left with the banks was of practically no value as compared to the debt that the customers were under.

Unknown said...

Hey Sanchit, I completely understand this facet of the 'Sub-Prime Crisis', but if you see clearly my proposition was only related to how the banks fail in regard to investing and giving loans to new businesses.

The problem reagarding the property rates falling, affecting the banks is directly also related to this problem, as the assets value of the company reduce too much which force the owner to revoke his ownership and give the responsibility to bank. Now, in normal conditions, bank is free to auction the property and get back its money, but currently as you are saying, the property rates don't allow it to do so.......So, it is not that type of 'responsibility' but LEGAL type of!

Waise, Thanx for explaining the other facet of the problem :)

Unknown said...

Nice Post... Although I dint know a lot about sub-prime crisis... but man banks sure take a lot of responsibility there ... i wanna go to us to start a business now :P

Rahul said...

Anyways a great try for an explanation but the real problem for the subprime crisis was not failure of loans but CDO or synthetic CDO. The financial analysts dig graves for themselves by over analyzing and over levraging the underlying assets of a particular financial instrument!

LOL

Regrds,
Rahul Bagaria
www.rotomec.co.in

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