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Bank of Americaの4% CDに関して、Mr. Mortgageも何事か書いている。

“Bank of America Announces Extended Hours at Retail Banking Centers This Weekend to Meet Increase in Savings Deposits”

The press release emphasizes the longer hours are because they want to make sure their customers can take advantage of the 4% rate on their new 7-month CD rates’. This is only half of the story. Could the other half be because Bank of America is taking in an unusual amount of large deposits in the past few weeks? My sources say ‘yes’. Bank of America appears to be doing very well on the deposit front. Whether this is at the expense of other banks, I do not know.

I am of BofA bull (or sorts). I still think they will feel pain in the next few years, as will most businesses due to the obvious economic down turn yet to come due to the total collapse of the mortgage and housing markets. But during the bubble years, they largely stayed out of the mortgage scene operating primarily as a mortgage banker unlike Wells Fargo, CITI, Chase and US Bank who actually have $10s of billions of on-balance sheet residential mortgage exposure.

While the Countrywide purchase my yet to prove disastrous, they have said recently they do not plan on making good on Countrywide debt and only plan to keep the good stuff. I wrote about it last week.

Draw your own conclusions on this one but when it comes to on-balance sheet mortgage risk and exposure vs size and liquidity, I am under the opinion BofA is one of the strongest large banks. Perhaps the general public is not as stupid as regulators think and understand this as well.

• Bank of AmericaはCD金利を4%に引き上げたばかりでなく、その勧誘のためにこの週末も店舗営業をするそうな。
• Mr. MortgageはBofAの経営については心配していない。というか、最強の銀行の一つと分析している。

自分もBank of AmericaがIndyMac並にヤバい状況にあるとは思ってない。短期的に準備金を増強する必要があるので、色々なことをやっているのではないかと思っている。

自分が心配しているのは...この4% CDにお金を吸い上げられてしまう他の銀行たち。対抗して預金金利を上げるような所が出てきたら...それは「要注意信号」と思ったほうがよいだろう。