Bank Failure - Friday Night Surprise

By now we are used to some bombshell news being released on Friday Evening, so we might as well preempt the surprise so we all can enjoy the night. So today we're going to guess at the surprise and I'll just update the predictions if they come true.

Calculated Risk is showing the stocks of Wachovia and National City plummet after the WaMu failure (ssssh! it's a buy out, really!).

Now Citigroup and Wachovia are in some sort of negotiations (like WaMu?). Oops, they are not....ooops, now there are a handful of suitors for a buy out..

oops, someone is resigning to spend more time with their family....ooops...

where have we seen these sound bytes before?

Magic secret decoder ring? Sounds like Wachovia is going down.

Bank Implode - O Meter is a failure watch blog.

Jim Cramer leaks a bank in Ohio will fail soon. National City is in Ohio.

Update: Fortis Gets a Rescue.

Update2: Wachovia:

Wachovia is the largest holder of option ARMs, ahead of Washington Mutual Inc., the Seattle-based lender that collapsed last week. The mortgages, which the bank calls ``pick-a-pay,'' represent 73 percent of Wachovia's loan portfolio

and check out this sound banking practice:

``Option ARMs were used to shoehorn people into homes they couldn't afford in the hope that home price appreciation would cover for any loss in the future,'' said Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance

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Fortis Bank now in trouble

The credit crisis goes global

BELGIUM’s Fortis is this weekend poised to become the first large continental bank to fall victim to the credit crunch, as the global chaos continues with Bradford & Bingley and American savings giant Wachovia both teetering on the brink.

The Belgian central bank and the country’s regulator are paving the way for a bailout of the huge banking and insurance group, which has a £540 billion balance sheet and a market value of £12 billion.

In Britain, the fate of Bradford & Bingley will be decided today. Fren-etic talks between the Bank of England, the Financial Services Authority and the government have been taking place this weekend to save the troubled mortgage bank.