Assessing the Black Holes

So, overall, almost all of the black holes are filled or being filled, and that will certainy ease the crisis, although not in any way that makes me confident.

In the new world we will have JP Morgan Chase (JPM - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Bank of America (BAC - commentary - Cramer's Take) as the two major banks, while Wells Fargo (WFC - commentary - Cramer's Take) and US Bancorp (USB - commentary - Cramer's Take) will acquire the deposits of failed banks from the FDIC, which will at last have an entity to which it can sell the failed banks' bad loans. Citigroup could survive, even thrive, but it will have to issue equity and buy someone to get out of this mess. As for Wachovia (WB - commentary - Cramer's Take), if it doesn't buy Morgan Stanley this weekend it will have to wait until it can sell off its bad loans to the Resolution Mortgage Trust. Then it will live to play again and be the most profitable bank of all. Without its purchase of Golden West, Wachovia would already be a dominant player, if not a Wells or a US Bancorp.

That's this weekend's scorecard. Sorry about the German, but as far as I know there is no other single word that means a successful battle of encirclement and annihilation by a superior enemy. Kesselschlacht is just too elegant not to appreciate.

At the time of publication, Cramer was long Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley.

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