US banks preparing for the moonlight flit?

This is a post you will wish to read if Lehman and/or other US Banks go down.

"London Banker" notes that US creditors get first pick of US assets in the event of insolvency, and speculates that Lehman may recently have pursued a strategy of selling foreign assets to increase their US-based holdings. In the event of the bank's failure, this would minimise the loss to American creditors, stiffing their foreign counterparts. Such a pre-crash preparatory repatriation of wealth, he says, might account for some of the recent turnaround in the dollar and US stocks.

He even hints at the temptation for banks to misappropriate assets in nominee accounts for which they are technically only the custodians. Kind of like the old "Muddling up the firm's money with my own," or Father Ted's "It was only resting in my account."

There is a sick plausibility to these speculations.

UPDATE: ... and Sitemeter tells me we are attracting the attention of Beijing (IP: 61.48.41.# (CNCGROUP Beijing Province Network)). A little paranoid frisson to enliven my Friday evening.