"Banks Still in the Crapper": Expect Loan Losses to Mount, Davidowitz Says
Aug 27, 2009 12:23pm EDT by Aaron Task in Investing, Banking
Since the government gave banks relief on mark-to-market accounting and the "stress tests" helped engineer a big round of capital-raising last spring, the financial sector has been on a tear.
Now a major debate is occurring over whether the sector remains attractively valued or is living on borrowed time.
On the optimistic side of the ledger, famed hedge fund manager John Paulson is upping his stake in Citigroup, The NY Post reports. Last month, an SEC filing revealed Paulson's fund taking big stakes in Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Capital One Financial and other financials.
On the other hand, regulators loosened restrictions on private equity firms' ability to buy failed banks, a nod to the drain on the FDIC's insurance fund given the failures of the past year - and more expected to come. (On Thursday, the FDIC said the number of banks on its problem watchlist rose to 416 in the second quarter from 305 in Q1, while its insurance fund fell 20% to $10.4 billion. "The decrease in the fund was chiefly caused by an $11.6 billion increase in the money the FDIC set aside for anticipated bank failures," Reuters reports.)
Count Howard Davidowitz of Davidowitz & Associates among the skeptics, which shouldn't surprise anyone who's seen his often grim (albeit entertaining) appearances on Tech Ticker.
"I think the banks have major problems to come," Davidowitz says. "The banks still have tons of toxic assets. [Plus] the shape of the consumer comes right back to the banks with all this credit card debt, student loans, auto loans [going bad] - all of this goes to the banks."
In addition to what he sees as a dire outlook for consumers, commercial real estate "is a catastrophe"...
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