I see plenty of obvious bank BK candidates. Whether or not they fail, or are bailed out by JPM / BAC, remains to be seen. Some of the poorer quality big banks include: WB (has lots of Golden West toxic pay option ARMs) NCC, RF, KEY Some of the poorer quality smaller banks that could fail before the end of 2008 include: DSL, CORS, BKUNA and VNBC My main thought about the WM bailout is that it is possible that there may be queues at WM branches today, and that footage of WM branches (with or without queues) will be on TV today and on the weekend. Mr and Mrs America will see this TV footage, and hear about the WM story. Some will scratch their foreheads on weekend and wonder if there money is safe, if WM can fail. Which may lead to some withdrawals at other banks, particularly if the media start running stories about the banks that I listed above. Although WB is in much better shape, the comparison with WM is obvious, and now is not the time that a bank wants to experience heavy withdrawals of customers' deposits. As for DSL, CORS, BKUNA and VNBC - although these banks are much smaller, I think the WM news will hurt them the most in terms of customer withdrawals, and it will probably speed up their failures. WB and NCC might be able to survive because they are larger.
Agreed: BAC and JPM are the governments bailout vehicles. The government definitely has these two banks on the 'too big to fail' list. Just in case you haven't been keeping score at home: January: BAC pays ridiculous amount for CFC March: JPM buys BSC for $2 a share, then gets conned into paying $10 per share September: BAC pays a super ridiculous amount for MER September: JPM buys WM
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_0P0u3evwCqg/SMbI-5JAMuI/AAAAAAAAAFM/6VwCSs8lkGk/s1600-h/writedowns.bmp print this list and paste on wall. started striking off one by one those banks that failed eventually within next few months.
Wow HSBS have 27 billion losses and only raised 4 billion. This doesn't look good for the largest bank in the world.