N.Y. Times and Others See Bright Money At the End of the Dark Vault

Here the New York Times reports what we have known, that we are entering a period when the banking sector will no longer be a major recipient of government bailouts  and that things are turning. They don't say bottom exactly, but it's basically what they are saying, and it's a conclusion that they should have reached a while back. Or they should have at least pinned the "bottom" to a period further in the past. Maybe a month or five ago. Maybe last October?

All of this assumes that the economy does not take another turn for the worse, which would result in even more losses at the banks — and the need for even more money to prop them up. But hopes that the tests will be a turning point in this financial crisis electrified Wall Street on Wednesday. Financial shares soared, lifting the broader stock market to its highest level in four months. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 101.63, or 1.2 percent, to close at 8,512.28.

(N.Y. Times)

More importantly, and in the same paper, we see smart money (like private equity types), trying to pick up assets--financial assets-- on the cheap:

For all the talk of the banking crisis, Mr. Flowers and other giant private equity players are circling distressed banks around the country, competing to buy into the industry. Bidding wars are now breaking out among private equity firms, including the Carlyle Group, which is going up against Mr. Flowers’s firm for a stake in BankUnited of Florida. 

They and other investors see banks as the recession’s biggest prize: potential money machines that could one day generate fabulous returns, particularly after the federal government eats the losses of failed banks, then heavily subsidizes their sale. But like Mr. Flowers, some of them would prefer to take over the banks completely, replace their managements and take all the profit.

(N.Y. Times )