U.S. Banks Record Huge Gains

US banks record huge gains

David Teather in New York
Friday March 18, 2005
The Guardian

Wall Street's big guns made soaring profits in the first quarter, with Morgan Stanley yesterday reporting a 20% rise in earnings and Goldman Sachs improving 17%.

Morgan Stanley said profits in the three-month period were $1.47bn (£764m) on the back of a 10% gain in revenue to $6.8bn. The firm said the improvements had been achieved through record fixed-income bond trading, higher investment banking income and a recovery in its Discover credit card business.

Sales from fixed-income securities rose 21% over the previous year while equity revenues were the highest in four years.

Goldman Sachs reported profits of $1.51bn on an 8% gain in revenues to $6.4bn. Like its rival, Goldman reported record fixed-income trading and investment banking revenues, as well as strong commodities trading.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1440690,00.html

their profits will gush.

David Allen
www.blackboxvoting.com
www.thoughtcrimes.org

all those $30+ charges add up.

Colossal Bandits

when people were jailed for the 'loan-sharking' interest rates these corporations charge!

the crash.

http://www.stock-market-crash.net/

I didn't see about the banks profits, although I think they had to be good. This is what I think will happen soon, I think it is already starting now:

>>>

How the Crash May Occur

Because our nation’s consumers are deeply in debt, losing jobs to outsourcing will cause many to go bankrupt. This, in turn, will cause housing prices to drop because foreclosures will become more frequent. Increased bankruptcies and falling housing prices has negative effect on stocks, which will also be sold by retiring Baby Boomers. Basically, a vicious circle will occur as the economy snowballs into a long bear market.

Based on the evidence, we’ve seen that the economy is on very shaky ground. If even just one of these aforementioned scenarios comes true, the stock market will drop considerably. Most likely, these unfortunate events will trigger each other and topple our house of cards economy.

<<<

America's problem isn't so much creating wealth. It's distributing wealth.

We could create more, if we distributed it in a more productive way (FDR would have told you that). But who cares about distributing it more productively if Goldman Sachs can figure out a way to distributing it in a way that guarantees the wealth of a few.

after the 1929 crash....perhaps it will happen again.

WOW American banks doing well. All banks are doing well. Its your "choice" to invest in an American Bank. These numbers are average, compared to their foreign competition and may well have been finalised a while back! By world standards, this performance would get "somebody" sacked!

bank machines, bill payments, etc.. of course they would like for every family to have a private social security account, a private medical account, a private unemployment insurance account, blah, blah blah.

Banks have been racking it in for years. They know the value of a new concept "lets begin to charge humans for each cash transaction they make (called debit cards)". They are not stupid!! Why wouldn't they want all that money that goes to pay government workers to administer health care, SS, unemployment insurance... why wouldn't they want all that and more (since by tearing apart the framework and getting rid of the huge economies of scale that come with Federal programs.. they can make it all less efficient and nickle & dime each family).

Duh!

to cash checks drawn on BoA/Wachovia accounts. I refuse to do business with them.

I wonder how much banks profit in interest by putting holds on non-payroll checks...

Hardly surprising given that most of our deficit spending ends up as treasuries. At least Steve Roach over at Morgan has dared to call the Republican Debt Machine financial Armagedden.

Greenspan of course, has finally admitted all that sloshing around might cause a problem.