Wells Fargo Steals My Idea – And Further Thoughts on the Unfairness of Bailouts

Calculated Risk has this quote up:

Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf said the financial crisis is presenting the bank with more acquisition opportunities.

“I would not be averse to a Fed-assisted transaction,” Stumpf said in a recent interview with the San Francisco Business Times. “Fixer-uppers don’t bother us.”

I’ve already made the same offer to the Fed:

Memo to Ben Bernanke: when the next stone is ready to hit the water (Lehman?), give me the money and I’ll buy it. Thanks dude.

Exactly who would be averse to getting the same deal as JP Morgan – a guarantee they won’t lose money if they buy up a dead-beat? And why should this opportunity only go to the big guys? Give me a guarantee I won’t lose money buying any of these deadbeat banks and you can bet I raise the funds quickly. So why is this a game that only the big guys are allowed to play?

This sounds like I’m kidding, but I’m not. See, the folks who are pushing for these bailouts keep telling us that the economy might implode without them. OK. If that were true (and I don’t believe it for a minute), and its important to keep the deadbeat banks around, does it really matter if the sweetheart deal goes to me instead of JP Morgan or Wells Fargo? Its one thing to push for bailouts to “save the economy” no matter how shaky that argument might be. Its another to insist that the folks who get the payoffs from the Fed and the government have to be… the same folks who have always gotten the payoffs.