We have noted that people should not assume that the banks that paid back their TARP are somehow out of the woods. They may actually be far from it. There's a chance it could all fall apart. You can put Chris Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics in this camp. He's long been a bear on banks. But not without reason. He says the big TARP banks and Treasury have created a "fantasy-land version of reality" that the industry is healthy again, according to Yahoo's Tech Ticker.

He argues that the TARP payback just might prove to be a really bad idea because it's unclear what the business model looks like without TARP. Let's face it there's a lot of credit card and commercial real estate exposure out there that can't really be modeled. If the economy worsens, look out. Whalen expects "some big banks will be coming back for more federal handouts later this year or early 2010, something the American people almost certainly won't stomach." 

For more:
- here's the article

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