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At the bottom in 1990, you began to see the big bifurcation in the banks between the haves, who were going to be favored by the Office of Thrift Supervision and the FDIC, and the have-nots, which were left out to dry.
Take a look at Wells Fargo and U.S. Bancorp (USB - commentary - Cramer's Take): these are just on fire and are almost at their 52-week high. Why? Because the regulators are going to let them buy the deposits of the failed banks throughout the country. This Darwinian process is being telegraphed right now by the market. While everyone would like to think that every bank is run by morons, the winning banks didn't write that much during the bad days and are now ready to write when no one else can and they know they can write good loans to people with good jobs and make a ton of money. These companies will also be the gigantic beneficiaries when the Fed panics and cuts rates big so they can make a hefty net interest margin to lend and will want to given the fact that nobody else will be. Of course, they don't have to do anything except take the 1.5% fed funds rate and invest it in the two-year for a risk-free arbitrage. This is fairly obvious, isn't it? That's what is happening. The consolidation is coming, and it is now unstoppable. Only the collapse of a Citigroup (C - commentary - Cramer's Take) can delay it, and that's the biggest question. Mind you, I do not expect outright buys to be made, a la Washington Mutual (WM - commentary - Cramer's Take) being bought by anyone. Why bother? If you just wait, they will roll over by themselves and you can buy the deposits, not the loans, in particular the home-equity loans, and WM has $60 billion of them according to David Faber at CNBC. Jamie Dimon doesn't want that. Who does? No one. At the time of publication, Cramer had no positions in the stocks mentioned.
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