NEW YORK — A year ago, I predicted that the losses of U.S. financial institutions would reach at least $1 trillion and possibly go as high as $2 trillion. At that time, the consensus among economists and policymakers was that these estimates were exaggerated, because it was believed that subprime mortgage losses totaled only about $200 billion.
As I pointed out, with the United States and global economy sliding into a severe recession, bank losses would extend well beyond subprime mortgages to include subprime, near-prime, and prime mortgages; commercial real estate; credit cards, auto loans, and student loans; industrial and commercial loans; corporate bonds; sovereign bonds and state and local government bonds; and losses on all of the assets that securitized such loans. Indeed, since then, the writedowns by U.S. banks have already passed the $1 trillion mark, and institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and Goldman Sachs now predict losses of more than $2 trillion.
But if you think that the $2 trillion figure is already huge, the latest estimates by my research consultancy RGE Monitor suggest that total losses on loans made by U.S. financial firms and the fall in the market value of the assets they hold (things like mortgage-backed securities) will peak at about $3.6 trillion.