National Australia Bank – Infinite Unknown

The International Monetary Fund says there’s no end in sight to the credit crisis gripping world financial markets.

As Australia’s NAB and ANZ have already discovered, the IMF believes banks are in for more pain as mortgage defaults soar and economies slow. The IMF has a particularly gloomy assessment of the US economy, and it came on the same day as the Bush administration revealed America’s budget deficit will climb to a record high of more than half-a-TRILLION dollars.

Speaker: Michael Rowland
Speakers: Jaime Caruana, head of the IMF’s capital markets division; Doug Peta, a market strategist with J and W Seligman; Jim Nussle, White House budget director

The National Australia Bank’s decision to write off 90 per cent of its US conduit loans will have dramatic repercussions around the world. Wall Street will be deeply shocked when they understand the repercussions of what NAB has done. It is clear global banks have nowhere near provided for their exposures to US housing loans which in the words of John Stewart are experiencing a “meltdown”.

We are now way beyond sub-prime. NAB says that it is suffering a 55 per cent loss on American housing loans – an event that has never happened in the history of a developed country in recent memory. This is an unprecedented event and means that the cost of bailing out the US financial system is now far beyond the highest estimates. A US recession is now locked in, but more alarmingly, 55 per cent loan losses point to the possibility of a depression.

IMF predicts no end in sight to credit crisis

National Australia Bank will shock Wall Street