As Uptown bagman Mac Everett winds up some charmingly incoherent praise for Ken Lewis and Bank of America on WBT this AM, time to cut the crap. Enough of the local obsession with who will replace Lewis rather than bigger issue of what kind of institution will they run.
Let’s start with the big picture. September’s employment numbers were sobering — at least to anyone not already drunk on “recovery” Kool-Aid. With 25 million un and under-employed workers out there, a massive pull-back in consumer credit from zombie banks, where exactly is the money going to come from to drive corporate earnings? To make big ticket purchases? Who leads this supposed recovery? The Fed?
That is the macro. Now consider BofA’s place within it. For that look to Chris Whalen and Institutional Risk Analytics which just published a scathing critique of Lewis and BofA. Whalen notes that the bank still has a massive hang-over from both Countrywide and Merrill. Countrywide’s fantasy home-equity loans remain an acute problem despite BofA racing to redo them.
Whalen also points out that the chronic and sometimes out-right fraudulent under-collateralization of securitizations over the boom years still must be dealt with by BofA, and Wells for that matter. He sees tremendous vulnerability there over the next 12 to 18 months. In other words, forget about recovery or “normalcy” in analyst talk in the near term. Instead gird for another full-on banking crisis into 2011.
Finally, Whalen notes that the FDIC has been chattering about making bank creditors shoulder some of the burden when banks fail and asks:
If you assume, as we do, that the equity of BAC is a zero, where should bond holders be haircut in order to recapitalize the bank without further financial support from the US taxpayer? We’ll start the bidding at 70 cents on the dollar.
Not exactly the shallow and trite Who Will the Board Ask to Prom coverage you are used to from the local Charlotte media, huh? Perhaps we should be less concerned about BofA’s next CEO moving the HQ to Boston or Manhattan and more concerned that there might not be an HQ to move.
Bonus Observation: Add Whalen to the list of informed observers and disgusted insiders who cite BofA’s slip-shod IT back-end as a real impediment to sound operations.