Archegos has been compared, with good reason, to Long Term Capital Management, the hedge fund whose collapse in 1998 posed such acute danger to the financial system it had to be bailed out under the auspices of the New York Federal Reserve to the tune of $3.6 billion. Today, family offices are estimated to hold at least $6 trillion in assets—more than the entire hedge fund industry. If one little-known family office is capable of wiping billions off the balance sheets of six investment banks, how long before the Federal Reserve and Treasury step in to prop up a single family fortune?
