Bloomber Interview with Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson is a historian and professor at Harvard and fellow at Oxford. Unlike a lot of academics his head is not lost in some ivory tower. He has made some fairly accurate predictions of what has come to pass in the last 18 months. He has also written some excellent books on financial history.

In this interview he talks about his latest book and more specifically how bubbles were created in the past. Also of interest was his comment about the latest problems in the banking sector. Ferguson is of the opinion that the reason the US banking sector is still cratering is becasue they have yet to own up to the massive losses they are carrying and that the injections of capital to date are not enough.

I am of the same opinion and expressed that view a month ago in Bank Injections just the Beginning. In my humble opinion, this is exactly the reason why Citigroup is on the brink of implosion. They have so much in the way of losses from bad assets coming down the pike that the $25 billion injection by the US government is far short of what they need to stabilize the company's balance sheet. I wouldn't be surprised if they need an AIG like amount of money to see them through.