When Pigs Fly -- No more major investment banks!

Yet another piece of news to file under When Pigs Fly: The Federal Reserve has approved the conversion of the two remaining large Wall Street investment banks, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, to be actual "bank" banks, or bank holding companies. Poof... just like that... no more major standalone investment banks. The "pillars" of Wall Street are now gone. Well, in reality they really are still "investment" banks rather than "bank" banks, but at least superficially they are now simply "banks" to the Federal Reserve. This permits them to gain access to all of the bailout resources that the Federal Reserve has been offering to "bank" banks. Merrill Lynch is also gaining access to the Fed bailout resources (ability to put mortgages and MBS up as collateral to get "credit" directly from the Federal Reserve) as their merger with Bank of America is pending.

-- Jack Krupansky