Excellent article on Andy Beal at Forbes.com today. A couple of especially noteworthy quotes:”We must be the only bank that has tripled in size in the last eight months, but we aren’t eligible for nothing,” says Beal. “The crazy thing is guys who weren’t real responsible are eligible.”

“He thinks the government is going to be ‘disappointed’ by its various programs to revive lending. He says Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s new plan to guarantee loans to buyers of toxic assets won’t lead to many sales because the problem isn’t liquidity but price. They are not low enough. Half the country’s banks–4,000 in all–would be bust, he says, if they marked their loans to what the loans would fetch in an auction. He says banks are fooling themselves by refusing to mark busted assets down.
“‘Banks are on a prayer mission that somehow prices will come back and they won’t have to face reality,’ Beal says. And that reality, according to Beal, is going to get a lot worse. ‘Unemployment is going over 10%, commercial real estate hasn’t even begun collapsing and corporate credit defaults are just getting started,’ he says. His prediction: depression, without bread lines this time, thanks to the government safety net, but with equal cost to society.”

Put me down as one who agrees with Beal’s assessment: things haven’t even come close to hitting the bottom, though it’s going to take a few years (and a couple minor recoveries) to get there.