Blawgletter Declares "Bank Holding Company" Status, Seeks Bailout Share
Now offering a free toaster with each new account.
The newspaper of record reports today that American Express Company has won the nod of federal regulators to morph into a bank holding company:
American Express, the nation’s last big independent credit card company, said late Monday that it would transform into a bank holding company to strengthen its position in the market turmoil.
Federal Reserve banking regulators said they approved its application because of the “unusual and exigent circumstances” roiling financial markets and the company’s interest in tapping up to $3.8 billion in government money. As a full-fledged bank, American Express would gain greater access to the Treasury Department’s bailout plan for banks, a move that might allow it to lend more freely and perhaps acquire a larger deposit-taking institution.
The step follows in the path of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley but ahead of financial units at General Motors and General Electric.
No word on why the bankruptcy-dwelling Lehman Brothers or the takeover-submitting Countrywide Financial and Bear Stearns missed the bank holding company maneuver.
And yet Blawgletter imagines that timing makes a difference. The recent bailouts of financial institutions -- including that supremely arrogant titan of insurance, AIG, and its mortgage-buying counterparts, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- has opened up vast new vistas for salvaging plummeting fortunes.
So, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, please consider this our declaration of intent to seek BHC status. While technically neither we nor our day job activities qualify as a banking institution -- and we don't have the too-big-to-fail pedigree -- our operating costs far exceed income from same. And please let's not even talk about our nutty investments in blawging futures.
Paperwork to follow.
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