With Citi, BofA in Trouble, Treasury Places $469B of New Bets

With Citigroup and Bank of America Corp. again facing imminent fiscal danger, the Treasury Department doled out $469 billion of TARP funds and loan guarantees today in the hopes of putting the massive banks back on sound footing.

BofA got $20 billion more TARP funds to put its total IOU to the government at $45 billion. Plus, $118 billion of BofA’s teetering assets were “ring-fenced,” meaning that the government guarantees them.

Citi, meanwhile, put a final tally on the loans it has put up for “ring-fencing”: $301 billion.

What is remarkable about BofA Rescue No. 2 is that the additional batch of assets guaranteed “were originated or issued on or after March 14, 2008,” and largely by Merrill Lynch & Co. In March, the entire banking world was well into the credit crisis, and for BofA to execute on its shotgun marriage to Merrill without fully understanding its ML exposure is beyond me. This is not the 2006 vintage, which has been nearly impossible to prognosticate. These are 2008 assets — every financial institution had presumably tightened underwriting by then. Every institution except Merrill Lynch, apparently. Those assets should have stuck out like sore thumbs.

I love what Seeking Alpha is calling BofA: “Tank of America.” Exactly.