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The latest news in the banking world:
Fraud and mismanagement at Afghanistan’s largest bank have resulted in potential losses of as much as $900 million — three times previous estimates — heightening concerns that the bank could collapse and trigger a broad financial panic in Afghanistan, according to American, European and Afghan officials.
I don’t have any insights to offer about this, but I’ll offer up some simple math instead. The GDP of Afghanistan is about $15 billion. That means that this single bank is reporting losses equal to about 6% of GDP. That would be the equivalent of, say, Chase or Bank of America reporting a loss of around $1 trillion or so. That’s a big loss.
