Big Texas bank on verge of failure [Guaranty, $13.4B assets] [FDIC only has $1.8B left?!]

Fortune / CNN Money ^ | 2009-07-31

[rabscuttle385]

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Guaranty Bank is hardly a household name. But the Austin, Texas-based thrift's looming failure is shaping up as a big headache for bank supervisors -- not to mention a black eye for Carl Icahn and others in the smart money set.

Guaranty (GFG) could be soon seized by the government in what would be the biggest bank failure in a year that has already had 64 of them. Last week, the bank warned investors to expect a federal takeover after regulators forced a writedown of its risky mortgage investments and a bid to raise new capital failed.

Guaranty has $13.4 billion in assets and operates 160 branches in Texas and California -- two of the three best banking markets in the nation, thanks to their size and population growth.

. . . . .

A big tab on Guaranty would be costly to the deposit fund, whose balance was $13 billion at the end of the first quarter. The FDIC has estimated failure costs on cases since then at $11.2 billion.

A spokesman for the FDIC stresses that it has already set aside an additional $22 billion for failure-related costs in 2009, and adds that congressional action this spring gave the agency access to $500 billion in Treasury credit.

[BP2]

Following the line at the top of this chart to the bottom right..

... it sure seems there may be something to that rumored "bank holiday" next month month after all

[wafflehouse]

considering the constant backwards revisioning of statistics, what makes you so certain that the 1% is an accurate number? and its pretty brave to call this a bottom in advance. (especially as you complain of doomers who continue to move the goalposts)

you are an anti-doomer, and just as off the mark (in an opposite direction) as the doomers are.

[DuncanWaring]

If the units in the “FDIC Balance” column are “millions”, then it really is 0.826 billion left.

[Centurion2000]

Of course, because you are a gutless tool.

And you are a disgusting troll.

[April Lexington]

Well, yes. But the last dollar starts pretty early around these parts!

[ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas]

Cap and trade is bad yes. Because it is a tax and unnecessary and ill timed. Goldman has precious little to do with that, however, and it is only another example of the ordinary smear to pretend otherwise.

I take it very seriously when an institution lobbies to take a step toward turning the whole nation into a bigger version of California.

[JasonC]

Thanks for calling me brave.

But no, I am not off the mark. I called the recovery for this year, last fall at the worst of it, and it is happening. The doom mongers did not call it.

I told everyone here to buy US corporates last fall at the depression peaks in yields; they have soared since.

As other men claimed that all the big banks were still going to fail and sold them to ridiculous revisited lows in March, I told everyone they were fine and profitable and would survive and recover from those lows.

The doom mongers have missed a 50% rally in stocks and a much lower risk, easy, called and delivered, run up in corporates. By not fighting the Fed I've been right; by letting their hate for it direct their judgment they have been hopelessly wrong about every major financial event this year.

You don't need to like these things for them to be true.

[JasonC]

Lots of things are legitimate business expenses. High marginal tax rates force wealth into corporate forms and they force adjustments to various prices. They do not manage to permanently reduce the real incomes of the true producers of wealth, because those are based on a true social utility to others and not on a tax code. It is fair to say they do cause deadweight losses and inefficiencies in the process. What they don't do is actually tax away 60% of the full value that men actually produce.

[wafflehouse]

I dont know what your agenda is, but in a large enough window, both you (irrational perma bull) and the doomers (irrational perma bears) will both be right. Enjoy it while you can.