Monday, March 8, 2010

OMG: FDIC Auction of Failed Bank Assets to Put Real Price on Toxic Assets

Learn the Japan lesson, get the crap off the books.
Price it at what it would fetch in the market.
Let failures fail.
Bloomberg via Calculated Risk:

From James Sterngold at Bloomberg: ‘On the Edge’ Banks Facing Writedowns After FDIC Loan Auctions (ht jb)

A Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. plan to auction more than $1 billion in assets seized from failed banks next month ... may trigger writedowns that weaken lenders nationwide.
...
The auctions may have wider repercussions. Of the $50.4 billion in loans seized from failed banks currently held by the FDIC, 63 percent involve participations by other lenders, according to data provided by agency spokesman Greg Hernandez.

“These banks can’t believe that the regulator they pay to protect them is going to sell these loans to someone who can flip them and cause them serious losses,” said Robert Reynolds, a lawyer at Reynolds Reynolds & Duncan LLC in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, ... “Our banks just cannot believe they’re being treated in a way that ultimately hurts the FDIC’s insurance fund, because some of them are right on the edge.”>>>MORE