Yesterday, Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit said his bank was profitable during the first two months of the year and is enjoying the best quarter-to-date performance since 2007.
Today, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said the company has been "solidly profitable" so far this quarter.
Hmmm. That's only two of the big banks but might this be an early signal that the financial intervention that President Obama has been leading on, since the very moment he won the election, is working?
Again, it's early but these are some very encouraging signs. Even CNBC just said that it does seem that the big banks which took TARP money are starting to see a turnaround.
Anyone else wonder what is being muttered in McConnell's and Boehner's office right now?
Mark Nickolas is the Managing Editor of Political Base, and this story was from his original post, "Obama Financial Policies Already Paying Off? "
All they've done is move some commas and decimals around on the ledger.
Losses were for tax breaks, to be applied retroactively to previous years profits.
Now that won't work, so voila, they have a profit.
Obama and Geithner have persistently claimed that solvency and general financial health was their goal. The banks have not increased their loans. They have increased their already outrageous credit card rates to consumers.
CNBC and the other financial news organizations, like WSJ, have a single point of view - the financial crowd. Their measure of approval is utterly irrelevant to the average person. They have no remaining credibility.
What Obama has accomplished is a transfer of wealth from taxpayers to bankers. Nothing else.
I suppose that's important to bankers and brokers. The other 302,000,000 of us got nothing and are paying for it.
Thanks Obama.
Dow down? Blame Obama.
Banking system not fixed? Blame Obama.
Now....Banks begin showing a profit? Blame.....Obama. Accuse him for helping Wall Street.
But wait -- President Obama instituted the most sweeping tax CUT for the middle class -- 95% of working Americans at the dismay of Republicans in Washington -- who made him REDUCE the tax cut..........
The banks are seeing "profits" because they are bleeding consumers dry with 30+% interest rate hikes on their credit cards and other unsecured loans.
I'm going to keep saying it until someone gets it. All the stimulus in the world isn't going to mean squat if the benefits to consumers get gobbled up with higher and higher credit debt payments instead of getting pumped into the general economy.
And all the efforts to get banks "lending again" will be for nothing if, by the time they do, millions of Americans have had their credit so decimated by delinquencies, defaults and bankruptcies (forced by the banks themselves) that they no longer qualify for credit.
If the next big looming disaster on the horizon is credit card defaults, it is largely due to the banks themselves for their recent actions against their cardholders across the board. It seems the banks are determined to destroy the economy from one end or the other.