“A Trillion Here, A Trillion There...” – Why 90% Of The European Bank Sector’s Market Cap Is Vaporware*

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/%E2%80%9C-trillion-here-trillion-there%E2%80%9D-%E2%80%93-why-90-european-bank-sector%E2%80%99s-market-cap-vaporware

Two weeks ago the BIS released the Basel Quantitative Impact Survey, "Results of the Basel, III monitoring exercise as of June 2011" which contained several very scary numbers that were noted in Zero Hedge yet which barely received any mention in the broader press. Because the numbers were all very, very large (think eyes glazing over 11-12 digits large), and because their existence meant that the long-term, chronic pain for Europe, which is and has been one of public (and selected private) sector deleveraging (which oddly enough is called “austerity” by everyone to no doubt habituate people to associate debt reduction with pain - where is "mean-reversionism" when you need it?), they, and the BIS report, were promptly buried under the dense foliage of the signal-to-noise forest. Yet it is numbers such as these, that provide us with the best possible glance at the entire forest, no matter how much the various global financial authorities enjoy inundating the hapless speculator crowd with endless irrelevant “trees” on a daily basis.