In the news, AP reports:
“Critics of the bailout were concerned that the Treasury Department would never see a return on its investment. But the government has already claimed profits from eight of the biggest banks.
The Times cited government profits of $1.4 billion from Goldman Sachs, $1.3 billion from Morgan Stanley and $414 million from American Express. It also listed five other banks — Northern Trust, Bank of New York Mellon, State Street, U.S. Bancorp and BB&T — that each returned profits between $100 million and $334 million.”
The government has also collected about $35 million in profits from 14 smaller banks, the Times reported.
Denninger has a great piece on this from earlier today entitled “The (Intentionally) Misleading Mainstream Media.” It’s still up at market-ticker.org and readers can probably find it by Googling the title. His bottom line is that the profit was reported only by ignoring numerous costs including the $100 B pass through from Treasury to AIG to Goldman Sachs.
So if I have this right, the Old Gray Lady reports a $4 billion profit by ignoring a $100 billion charge. It makes me wonder why I sat through 5 years of college accounting if you can do things this way.
I am trying to figure out the swine flu mess..so my mind is off the banks for a while..
Of course it’s hype and I’ll link denninger’s post..
But I have another angle on this…I have a clue where some of the banks might have made some money recently..