We have all our retirement accounts, a large portion of our assets in E*TRADE. I looked closely at E*TRADE financials last night, and concluded the company is effectively INSOLVENT. The CEO of E*TRADE is writing they “…could absorb an immediate write down in excess of $1 billion and still remain well capitalized.”
Except there is one problem, look at E*TRADE balance sheets: there appears to be a lot more than a billion in write downs in store for E*TRADE. The numbers don’t look pretty.
This week the markets finally spooked me, shook me to the core, that this finanical melt down could get real ugly. Major banks could collapse.
Just one example, a best friend of mine works in a very senior position in a very large Wall St. investment bank.
I wrote him, “What’s the feel of the markets, from the inside?”
He Blackberry’s me back,
“Be afraid, be very afraid. I’m now at a insider financial conference and very senior managers are discussing Worst Case Scenarios. There is real fear in the air even among very seasoned finance industry professionals.”
Today I submitted request to have ALL our family assets tranferred out of E*TRADE. It takes about 7 days to complete. I cannot imagine E*TRADE would collapse, but they certainly could lock our accounts up for a long time. WHO KNOWS how this all will play out for security of major financial institutions?
I think gold is looking more and more attractice. The gold market LOVES financial instability.
