IT'S PRETTY SERIOUS

Somebody tell Sean Hannity!

Banks Face Biggest Crisis in 30 Years, Report Says (Update2)
By Edward Evans
April 1 (Bloomberg) -- Credit market turmoil poses the most severe crisis for banks in 30 years, surpassing Black Monday in 1987, the Asia currency crisis and the burst of the dot-com bubble, Morgan Stanley and Oliver Wyman said in a joint report.

Revenue from investment banking may drop 20 percent in 2008 before a further $75 billion in markdowns, analysts led by Huw van Steenis said in a note to clients today. Six quarters of earnings will have been erased by writedowns and falling revenue by this month, rivaling the collapse of the junk bond market at the end of the 1980s that put Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. out of business, the report said.

``The industry is facing the most severe investment banking crisis in 30 years,'' the analysts wrote in the report. ``Global securities markets are in the midst of profound cyclical and structural change.''