From the paper:

``about 1.9 trillion Euro of short-term liquidity, and about 4.5 trillion Euro of long-term funding. The capital shortfall is equivalent to about 60 percent of all outstanding Tier 1 capital, and the short-term liquidity gap is about 50 percent of all the liquidity that banks currently hold``

is an incredible and sobering thought.

At the end of August this year, JP Morgan told traders who work on the commodities desk for the firm to find another job. In fact the firm is going to shut down all proprietary trading to comply with the new US curbs on investment banks taking positions in the market.

Response and Opinion:
There are several big leading trends I am seeing at progressive banks presently, some of which I have listed below, sorry became carried away and listed 16 in this article:

His question ``What is going on with these crazy credit ratings reversal?`` - I have taken to put an opinion to that a little later on.

To make FREE work one has to apply a strategy so to answer this question we are going to look at various strategies for FREE.
Nothing is for free including time and nothing comes from nothing, free works if there is an underlying strategy behind the business model.

So with that in mind how do companies generate revenue from FREE, here are eight example strategies of FREE?

I fair the rating agencies have a lot to account for in this credit crisis but we only have ourselves to blame.

Imagine the following scenario sets:

``Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went for a little joke today about resetting relations with the Russians. Clinton, presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with a gift-wrapped RESET button, called the `little gift`. The word on the button was meant to say RESET in Russian however as Lavrov acknowledged - the word actually means OVERCHARGE in Russian.``

That is where the banks are at; OVER-charged, OVER-burdened and OVER-encumbered.

In simple terms banks aren`t lending because they are under capitalised with model loss impairments. A recent article in the economist clearly shows this:

This week president Barack Obama called the bonus payouts for banks receiving rescue funds as "shameful" and that the government will require financial companies on the aid trade to cap compensation for top officials at USD 500,000 a year.

Obama stated that he was responding to a public outcry "in bad taste" over bonuses paid to bankers and wanted to enforce greater transparency of expenses and restrict severance pay when executives leave the company.

Oh I hear the argument that if GM fails the outcome to the manufacturing supply chain may be devastating; huge job losses could amplify the broad decay of the US economy further (if that is possible with interest rates hovering above nothing) and lead the world to a deep seated recession as marginal retail consumption declines. Personally I believe the world is greater than General Motors however the domain I am going to pitch from in this article is NOT some rhetoric to argue this point.

I simply believe we should paint it as it is; an angel or a prostitute even though one can be both. It is in that, the inability to see ourselves for who we are or perhaps the lack of being honest with real outcome which is a major play on the entire financial crisis. No regulation can resolve what has and inevitably what is likely to be again unless we truly accept what is.

Without digressing too much, there are three key maxims that to me I question from a moral perspective. These need to be painted as they are even though they may be well intentioned.

If we were to put a title around this month`s outcome, it would have to be 228-205; the straw that breaks the camel`s back if you want a different cliche.