>>>Royal Bank of Scotland
>>>
>>>down 25% this morning
>>
>>I read an article sometime over the last couple of days (I looked for a link but can't find it - I think it was in the National Post) that pointed out that the assets of even the largest failed banks in the US are a relatively small percentage of US GDP. It also pointed out that RBS's assets are considerably larger than the UK GDP.
>>
>>An even more severe example of this (although much smaller in absolute size) is the current crisis in Iceland: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/3153061/Financial-crisis-Iceland-PM-warns-its-every-country-for-itself.html
>
>All these articles constantly confuse assets and liabilities. It is ballooning liability size that bring banks down.

And most of these banks can't actually tell you how big their liabilities are.