Word: banking
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...ticked off about the bank bailouts. Furious. You think somebody - other than you and your fellow taxpayers - needs to pay. Let's try to work out who that somebody ought...
...banks' shareholders don't make a promising target. The stock prices of Citigroup and Bank of America, to name two especially dramatic examples, are down more than 90% from their 2007 peaks. There are arguments, relating to incentives for executives and future shareholders, for wiping out current shareholders at the most troubled banks. But that won't pay for anything - the shareholders simply don't have much more value to cough up. Same goes for those who work in the business. Many have lost their job and life savings, and most have seen their salary cut. Yes, there have been...
...these creditors? The biggest group, with outstanding loans of about $9 trillion, is depositors like you and me. When you deposit money, you're lending it to the bank. Those deposits were explicitly insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) up to $100,000 before the crisis, and the banks paid for that insurance (though not in full, given that FDIC coverage has been raised to $250,000 and seems effectively without limit at bigger banks) and passed the cost on in the form of lower interest rates than on, say, an uninsured money-market account. That, plus...
...banks also borrow on wholesale markets, mainly by issuing bonds. About $2.6 trillion of bank funding in the U.S., 20% of the total, comes from such debt securities, according to the FDIC. At the most troubled of the big banks, Citigroup, the figure is 27%. (Citi's domestic depositors account for just 16% - its main deposit base is overseas.) These bank bonds are mostly in the hands of large, sophisticated institutional investors - pension funds, insurance companies, mutual funds. It may be too much to ask small depositors to monitor the risks at the banks where they put their money...
Besides the Phillies' home field, Citizens Bank Park, in which park do you enjoy playing the most? John Wargo, MANAYUNK...