Buckeye State Blog - More Evidence That National City Got Screwed - Comments

I was shocked

mikelz — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 21:34:28 -0800

I have no idea who has been running National City lately. It sure wasn't the same CEO (Daberko) who was there when I left after 15 years in 1998. The management then was ultra-conservative. I can't imagine that they bought any of that paper. Maybe I'm not so shocked now. There was a regime change during one of the acquisitions and that regime failed miserably. I can't chalk it all up to favoritism. I would like to because I literally hate George W. Bush. I guess we can find this and everything else in the Warren Report. I am a big fan of transparency.

Now I'm really concerned...

Jeff Hess — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 05:41:03 -0800

Shalom Nick,

Considering that my bank, AMTrust, the former Ohio Savings, came in at 86, I really want to know what the numbers mean.

My gut continues to tell me that the whole bailout crisis is just President George Bush's way of giving a huge gift to all his buddies as he's headed out the door.

I hope that our members of Congress are using their heads and not their guts in this, but I really don't have great faith that that is the case.

B'shalom,

Jeff Hess

Have Coffee Will Write

More Evidence That National City Got Screwed

Nick D — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 11:22:30 -0800

I know that the nail is already in the proverbial coffin, but I just can't let this one slide.

Chris Brunner of the Lew Rockell blog went to the trouble of calculating the Texas ratio of every bank in the U.S. This information was then posted on the blog this past Monday (December 29th). (H/T Have Coffee Will Write)

The Texas ratio is the ratio of a bank's non-performing loans to its capital reserves. When this ratio reaches 100 the bank can be considered in imminent danger of failure, and a ratio over 50 means that the bank is in hot water.

What was National City's Texas ratio? Remember this was a bank that supposedly was in such bad shape that the Treasury Department denied it its' share of the TARP money and instead gave it to PNC.

National City's Texas ratio was 23. For comparison's sake, KeyBank's is 16, and Fifth Third's is 19, and they both received their TARP money.

There is something more going on here. For the sake of the thousands of employees who will be laid off, we deserve more investigation into why the Treasury denied National City its share of the TARP money.