Market-Ticker:
So Wells comes out this morning and says they're going to make a "record" profit, claiming an expected 55 cents (.vs. mid 30s expectation)
It must be nice to be able to keep loans on the books at whatever price you feel like, receive billions of taxpayer money including "assistance" in rolling up Wachovia, and then turn out to not need it, right?
That is, if these numbers are accurate.
Wells premarket is ramping from $14.89 at the close yesterday and now trading premarket at $18.10, up over $3 or some 30%.
This leads one inescapably to the following:
* Either Wells is lying (obfuscating losses through unrealistic marks, etc) OR
* These "bailouts" were no such thing - they were a simple and transparent looting operation by the banks that is now showing up directly in "earnings" (and will shortly show up in the bonuses of executives too!)
So which is it folks?
Are the banks really that healthy? Because if they are, you've been robbed to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars per person in this country, and it is long past the time that you act to stop it.
If they aren't, then how is it that these banking executives are not residing in the graybar motel for cooking their books? Again, it is long past the time that you, the citizens of this country, act to stop it.
And while we're at it, perhaps you'd like to tally up the income you're NOT making on savings (CDs, etc) through the much lower rates of interest you're being PAID so that these guys can post "record earnings"? Naw, we don't want to hold The Fed accountable for their monetary policy - a backdoor way of looting the public even further - do we?
PS: AIG's former CEO Greenberg is on CNBC this morning and he actually used the word "LOOTING" and insisted that the government must claw back the payments that were made as a "passthrough" - exactly as I and others have called for.
While I object to the characterization that Hank Greenberg was "blameless" in AIG's morass, it is nonetheless refreshing to hear people like him talking about what we should and indeed must do - that is, claw back the inappropriate and arguably illegal "pass through" payments that in my opinion are nothing more than pure robbery of the taxpayers of this country.
2 comments:
Pope hater appointed to Obama's Faith-Based Initiative.
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=46192
If I remember correctly, Wells Fargo is the one that didn't want the money, has been trying to give back the money, and got threatened with legal action if they didn't shut up about giving back the cash they didn't want or need.
http://beerswithdemo.blogspot.com/2009/04/bad-idea-that-just-keeps-getting-worse.html
Fast forward to today, and that same bank is begging to give the money back. The chairman offers to write a check, now, with interest. He's been sitting on the cash for months and has felt the dead hand of government threatening to run his business and dictate pay scales. He sees the writing on the wall and he wants out. But the Obama team says no, since unlike the smaller banks that gave their TARP money back, this bank is far more prominent. The bank has also been threatened with "adverse" consequences if its chairman persists. That's politics talking, not economics.
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