The Banking Crisis Might not End Before 2013, S&P

Well, so much for a banking system that has stabilized and the risk of systemic failure averted. The credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s said Wednesday that the nation’s banking crisis has “merely entered a new phase” and might not end before 2013.

From Reuters: While efforts to spur lending, take bad assets off banks’ balance sheets, and restart the market for packaging and selling securities may help the sector, S&P said banks will have a tough time surviving absent a bigger capital cushion than regulators require.

“There’s nothing to say that this banking crisis can’t go on for another three or four years,” S&P Managing Director Tanya Azarchs said.

emphasis added

Unless the banks and other financial institutions have more losses on their books deriving from exposures to toxic assets and other securitized lending that they haven’t yet confessed, I’d say S&P’s assumption on the banking situation now faces a major test.

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