Strange bedfellows

It’s funny how financial meltdowns can bring together the unlikeliest of players. Investment News is reporting that Goldman Sachs, which was on the verge of collapse last week, might now be interested in the assets of failed banks, such as Pasadena-based IndyMac Bank. Goldman, which has become a bank holding company in order to get faster access to capital, must now buy retail deposits and bank assets. And it just so happens that IndyMac, which the feds took over in July, is still on the market. "Those might be the sort of things we’d be interested in looking at," a Goldman spokesman told the publication. That's about all the spokesman would say, so there's no telling whether anything will come of the apparent interest. But if not IndyMac, Goldman will have plenty of chances to snap up troubled banks. All told, 117 more banks holding $78 billion in assets are on the FDIC’s list of "problem institutions."