Last Call

Yet another multi-billion dollar bank failure is in the works for this week in Texas as Guaranty Bank of Austin Texas is expected to be seized by the FDIC in the next 48 hours.

Guaranty Bank, an Austin-based savings institution with $13.5 billion in assets, is expected to be seized by the FDIC by the end of the week. According to multiple reports late Wednesday, Spanish bank Banco Bilbao Vizcaya has won the bidding for Guaranty.

Representatives for the FDIC and Guaranty were not immediately available for comment.

A private equity group led by investor Gerald Ford -- who got a federal bank charter in November so he could buy failed banks -- also reportedly made a bid for Guaranty. Other banks said to have expressed interest were JPMorgan Chase and Toronto Dominion, which made a failed bid for Florida's BankUnited when that bank was auctioned by the FDIC in May.

Guaranty's closing would mark the second-biggest bank failure of 2009, after last week's collapse of Alabama's Colonial Bank, which was seized by the FDIC and sold to regional bank BB&T.

Guaranty reiterated Monday that it doesn't expect to survive following its failure to raise new capital. The bank lost $174 million in the second quarter, according to its latest quarterly report to the Office of Thrift Supervision.

Needless to say, more of these are on the way. We're stuck with all the toxic debts, the banks bid on the assets for pennies on the dollar and get all the benefit.

And it goes on and on and on and on...