The press is all doom and gloom at the moment.  Not without reason, but the causes and implications are getting blurred.  So I did a simple analysis comparing three stock markets, their fall since mid 2007, and the relative importance of the banking sector in that fall.  The results suggest that it does depend where you live.  There is an all out banking crisis in the US and UK, based on market sentiment.

 

 

Somehow Canadian banks are not regarded with such fear as the others.  This no doubt partly due to the early work of Purdy Crawford and the Federal Governments efforts last year to manage the $35bn in ABCP.  In retrospect this was a far-sighted move (Fall 2007).  In a very complex manouvre, they carved the $35bn held by smaller banks and investment houses into tranches that were backed by hastily arranged lines of credit from the Banks.  In any event the outcome was an orderly shift away from certain bank or investment house bankruptcies.