FDIC Archives

The FDIC May Have to Seize Itself

Editor’s note: Adrienne Gonzalez is founder and managing editor of Jr Deputy Accountant as well as regular contributor to leading financial/investment sites like Seeking Alpha and GoldmanSachs666. By day, she teaches unlicensed accountants to pass the CPA exam, though what she does in her copious amounts of freetime in the evening is really none of your business. Follow her adventures in Fedbashing and CPA-wrangling on Twitter @adrigonzo but please don’t show up unannounced at her San Francisco office as she’s got a mean streak. Her favorite FASB is 166.
In honor of Bank Fail Friday, let’s take a look at our doubt over the FDIC continuing as a going concern. Sure, we know it’s technically a government agency and therefore not subject to the same sorts of worries as public companies but there is certainly something brewing here.
We are not in the business of auditing the financial statements of the FDIC, even if they provided such information. Frankly, if they did, we really aren’t equipped to analyze said statements. Be that as it may, you don’t need to be an expert to see that the FDIC is in a whole shit ton of trouble (yes, that is our qualified opinion).
More, after the jump

Remember Colonial Bank? Surely Sheila Bair has been up late since the news broke on Monday that they’d cooked their books, or something about TARP fraud (though the bank never received TARP funds after that TBW deal for $300 million fell through Friday). Maybe it was undercapitalization? Who keeps track of these things?
Anyway, the point here is that the FDIC well has run dry and there’s no magically conjuring up a Treasury line of credit. While Congress has offered up a $500 billion “line of credit” to our friends at the FDIC, that money technically does not exist. (Psst: hate to break it to Congress but yours truly is only a tad concerned that there may be trouble in the bond market ahead).
I’m no mathlete but this should be fairly simple to understand:
Colonial has about $25.5 billion in assets, while the FDIC has about $13 billion remaining in the fund. According to Sheila’s math, new FDIC fees levied against Too Big to Fail will net the fund about $27 billion this year. To put this into perspective, the FDIC lost $33.5 billion in 2008 to cover 25 bank failures. Add it up, as we’ve had 69 bank failures in 2009 to date. Carry the 1 and I believe we arrive at the following figure: the FDIC is screwed.
Like I said, someone might want to check my numbers but it doesn’t look good.
I could also point out that perhaps the FDIC should have chosen the “proactive” route and collected insurance premiums for the last 10 years instead of assuming the good times would last forever but again, not my jurisdiction.
Disclosure: the author has long since diversified her “investments” in the First National Bank of Her Mattress, thankyouverymuch.

UPDATE 2: SEC Memo says Guaranty Bank to be Seized, not Sold

thumbs down col.gif Editor’s Note: Teri Buhl is a Wall Street investigative reporter who has written for the New York Post, Trader Monthly and HousingWire.com. Her big scoops include breaking news on all things wrong at IndyMac, calling out Bob Steel for lying to investors about losses on CNBC, and shining a light on Wells Fargo for manipulating earnings with paper accounting gains. She resides in lower Fairfield County, CT and actually earned an accounting degree from Uer case of the Feds proping up zombie banks, sources have reported that an SEC memo has stated that the FDIC will seize Guaranty Bank (GFG: 0.123, -5.38%) and it will not be sold as previously rumored.
This continues the trend of bank seizures occurring with virtually no warning. According to one prominent hedge fund manager:
“The problem is that the regulators know that if they call these things anything worse than “well capitalized”…it is a kiss of death. In many ways it is the same issue as rating agencies (curse of the AAA) that know that if they downgrade certain types of companies, they are putting them out of business. As a result, many banks are “well capitalized” until the day they are seized. It is absurd.”
More, after the jump

Austin, Texas based Guaranty Bank just updated its bank reports to show a $1.8 billion loss for the 1st quarter, of which $1.6 bil was due to “Other-Than-Temporary Impairment Charges on Debt and Equity Securities”. Um, not good.
What’s worse is that, according to our OTS sourcing, this will be a full shutdown. This means that after insured deposits are returned the bank will be unwound and put out to pasture. No cash rich private equity groups will sweep in to offset losses and clean up the regulator’s mess this time.
The updated bank regulatory reports show Guaranty’s assets are now $13.35 billion, with over 70% of those assets being real estate related. There are $2.1 billion in deposits listed as uninsured. Guaranty operates 164 branches and employs around 1,700 people.
Sourcing inside the regulator said,”Considering the OTS let the bank defer taking write-downs, I’m sure there will be skeletons that will embarrass the OTS again.”
The seizure will hit the FDIC’s budget to the tune of at least $5.3 bil according to sources within the OTS. Another top bank analyst has predicted the hit to be closer to $8 billion.
This, on top of what’s going on with Colonial Bank failing, should wipe out what’s left of the FDIC’s budget. As a result, they are going to have to borrow from the Treasury and then add that cost to our nation’s banks, which we all know just gets passed on to the taxpayer in the form of higher banking fees.
Paul Miller, analyst for FBR Capital Markets, told Going Concern, he believes that banks will be assessed a fee of 5 bps of total assets this fall in order to fund the FDIC’s empty coffers. This new fee assessment will raise $5 billion for the FDIC’s bank seizure budget.
We’ll continue to update this story as we learn more.