According to Gregory Peters, head of credit strategy at Morgan Stanley:

There's a greater than 50 percent probability that the financial system will come to a grinding halt. You have the SIVs, you have the conduits, you have the money-market funds, you have future losses still in the dealer's balance sheet in the banks [..] That's all toppling at once.

Financial institutions are acknowledging that the losses could reach over $400 billion, and that is before an additional several hundred billion dollars worth of residential real estate enters foreclosure, leading to additional losses in the derivatives market of many times that figure due to leverage.

Over the next few months, major impacts will be felt.

First, the gargantuan bond insurance industry is teetering on the brink of the abyss, with rating agencies threatening downgrades of 14-18 notches (from AAA to deep junk). That could leave trillions of dollars of bonds uninsured, and therefore no longer able to borrow a triple A credit rating independent of their true worth. Those bonds would lose much of their value, and many large investors, such as pension funds, would be obliged by law to sell anything below investment grade.

Secondly, US accountancy rules changed November 15, affecting the upcoming financial year. "FASB 157" dictates that banks and securities firms can no longer hide their worst assets as Level 3, which allowed them to be kept off balance sheet. Trade in classes of commercial paper theoretically worth more than entire countries will have to be valued using observable inputs for the first time (where possible), rather than mark-to-make-believe.

In addition, as of January, banks can no longer indemnify their auditors for signing off on accounts they cannot verify, leaving the auditors potentially liable over the virtually unquanitfiable exposure of their clients to the derivatives market. Auditors are therefore likely to make every effort to verify valuations where evidence of true value can be found.

A cascading failure of financial institutions is all too possible.

(See also the Energy and Environment Round-Up for September 7th below.)

For all those who think that the world's central bankers have the developing credit crunch contained, look at the liquidity crisis in asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP), which is currently affecting Canada worst of all. ABCP is an impenetrable mish-mash of mortgages, credit card receivables, car loans and other miscellaneous debt that institutions were quite happy, until recently, to use as a convenient place to park short term cash. Within a month that has seen a severe attack of risk aversion, it has gone from safe to toxic, with the result that liquidity has dried up almost completely.

In Canada, banks are trying to put together a deal that converts $35 billion of non-bank short term paper, that could no longer be rolled over, into 5-year floating-rate notes, but the credit default swaps (which can be, and were, used as vehicles for naked speculation) are a huge problem. Does the deal remind anyone of the Argentine financial crisis - where short term bonds were converted to long term (and then later defaulted upon)?

Those who think the situation contained might also look to Europe at the increasing gap between base rates and three-month interbank lending rates (Libor). That gap is now at its widest for 20 years, reflecting uncertainty and distrust as to the risk exposure of other banks, and the hoarding of cash. Interbank lending is breaking down, despite the efforts of the ECB and the Fed to restore confidence.

Is there really nothing to worry about?

ABCP investors could lose half their money

The vast majority of about $35-billion of non-bank ABCP is backed by risky bets on credit default rates that are now so far underwater that investors could be looking at losses as high as 50 on the dollar, said Edward Devlin, Canadian portfolio manager for highly respected California-based bond fund manager Pacific Investment Management Co. LLC....

....Commercial-paper markets around the globe have been struggling with fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States, but the situation is worst in Canada.

"It's the one country where people couldn't get their money back," Mr. Devlin said. "There's a whole group of people who bought commercial paper [thinking it was liquid] and now they find they can't get their money back."