I think a lot of people are missing that it was not 16 liquid USD that was lost here. It was 16B of various assets on paper. That's different from a pretty liquid stock traded on the NYSE.
The 16B could've never been liquidated as 16B in cash because the liquidity for many of these assets is too low. Selling even just a small fraction would have crashed the market for many of these assets. It's impossible to know what the liquid worth of these assets was, but it was probably 5-10x less than what's on paper.
The 16B could've never been liquidated as 16B in cash because the liquidity for many of these assets is too low. Selling even just a small fraction would have crashed the market for many of these assets. It's impossible to know what the liquid worth of these assets was, but it was probably 5-10x less than what's on paper.