Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Collapse of Bank of America?

Has anyone been keeping up with Bank of America lately?   I couldn't help noticing rather alarming developments.   After acquiring Country Wide, Bank of America has been faced with a bunch of lawsuits from multiple entities ranging from the states of Nevada and Arizona, AIG, and a group from Country Wide financial over the past year.    It looks like Bank of America is not only trying to stem the losses from soured mortgage loans as evidence by its recent attempt to sell off its toxic securities to BlackStone, but that it's also trying to raise cash as well by selling off a large portion of its stake in China Construction bank, selling of 5 year bond notes, and its international credit card business all with in a matter of a few months.  This is all occurring AFTER the supposed weak economic recovery and the repayment of all the bail out money to the big banks.  Usually, when a bank is not in keeping with a healthy banking ratio they start selling a lot of their assets both god and bad to raise enough cash to keep going.   If they are unable to do so, they may go the same way of Lehman Brothers.  Let's hope Bank of America does not go the way of the dinosaur, but I'm not holding my breath. 

Can Bank of America stem its losses from soured subprime mortgages and resulting lawsuits?  If news about BAC selling more and more of its good assets continue to hit the headlines, I'm going to be seriously doubtful about its future.  I really think that if Bank of America falls we will experience another global financial meltdown.  The next few months are going to be very interesting to see.

Update:  Looks like BAC already got its bail out package from the government already since 8/10/11 in the form of a $500 million dollar sale of its troubled assets to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which are both government entities.  With buddies like that, who says you need congressional approval or the Fed to bail you out?    It does appear though that those assets are rapidly deteriorating in value and that government isn't so happy with the deal in the end.  Hmm, what to do. 

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