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Morgan (MS) and Goldman (GS) Still Toast--Especially Morgan

nourielroubini2.jpgThe happy consensus is that Morgan Stanley (MS) and Goldman (GS) are Wall Street's sole survivors, even as they now masquerade as banks. That's a bunch of hooey, says Mr. Roubini. He recommends that Goldman and Morgan immediately rush to merge with international commercial banks, before investors figure out they they're screwed.

(Why international banks? Because the US banks aren't healthy enough.)

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Roubini:

After the bust of Bear and Lehman and the merger of Merrill with BofA I suggested that Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs should also merge with a large financial institution that has a large base of insured deposits so as to avoid a run on their overnite liabilities.

Instead Morgan and Goldman went for the cosmetic approach of converting into bank holding companies as a way to get further liquidity support – and regulation as banks – of the Fed and as a way to acquire safe deposits. But neither institution can create in a short time a franchise of branches and neither one has the time and resources to acquire smaller banks. And the injection of $8 b of Japanese capital into Morgan and $5 b of capital from Buffett into Goldman is a drop in the ocean as both institutions need much more capital.

Thus, the gambit of converting into bank while not being banks yet has not worked and the run against them has accelerated in the last week: Morgan’s CDS spread went through the roof on Friday to over 1200 and the firm has already lost over a third of its hedge funds clients together with their highly profitable prime brokering business (this is really a kiss of death for Morgan); and the coming roll-off of the interbank lines to Morgan would seal its collapse.

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Even Goldman Sachs is under severe stress losing business, losing money, experiencing a severe widening of its CDS spreads and at risk of losing most of its values most of its lines of business (including trading) are now losing money.

See Also: Sure, Paulson's Plan Will Pass, But It Still Stinks

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