Next Crisis: Everything Could Be Leveled Within 12 Hours

(snippet)
The scariest thing is that we have still done nothing to address the propensity for institutional panic to come back, which courtesy of money now being electronic 1's and 0's, will certainly take an even faster time to hit its plateau when it appears next. Keep in mind that post the Lehman crisis, it only took 3 days before the money markets locked up and were in need of governmental guarantees, while the broader repo market was shut down within 48 hours. As retail investors tend to enjoy obtaining physical delivery of their asset (read FRNs), for institutions, the wave can turn at a heartbeat, and next time around the administration will likely not even have 12 hours before a complete financial, systemic, and irrevocable lock-down is in place. The only backstop to this risk- the Federal Reserve. Yet the question remains: how long before nobody in the world dares to take the Fed head on. It is no secret that the entire investment community now realizes that the Fed's experiment is doomed. The US is no longer a viable going concern: when the CBO notifies the public that the debt/GDP in a decade will be 90% and that total marketable debt will double to $20 trillion, the game is over. And just like in any good old game theory construct, the first defector is the one to benefit the most. The Fed can not, be definition "defect"; so when one of the whale account does, and the avalanche of enjoinders jumps on board, the proverbial "you don't get in front of the Fed" will be a memory. What we know is that we now have a t-10 years timer before the US economy is certainly finished. But the real question is when the defections against Bernanke et al will begin in earnest.

Back to the repo system: As Gorton points out - "Times change. Now, banking has changed again. In the last 25 years or so, there has been another significant change: a change in the form and quantity of bank liabilities that has resulted in a panic.
More Here..