Friday, January 02, 2009

More Dead Banks to be Re-Animated

In the 1980s, the horror movie Re-Animator portrayed a mad scientist obsessed with bringing dead bodies back to life. Today the real-life mad scientists in the U.S. Treasury Department have performed that feat with companies like AIG and Citigroup that should by any account be dead.

The Treasury Department is making plans to do this over and over again:

Treasury said participation by other companies in such a program would be weighed on a case-by-case basis. Treasury said it would consider, among other things, whether the "destabilization" of a financial institution could threaten the viability of creditors and others. It also would weigh the extent to which the institution faced a loss of confidence because of the troubled assets it held.



In other words, when the next wave of defaults hits option-ARMs and prime mortgages, every major bank in America will be "destabilized" and face a "loss of confidence." Last fall's solvency crunch will play itself out all over again by the end of 2Q09.

Can I make money from dead banks? I did in 2008! Maybe it's time for to make some short plays on XLF again. I'll let you know if I decide to re-animate this strategy later this month. It's not dead yet, and I could make some killer profits. I hope I haven't bored you to death with my puns.