Six Giant Banks Made $51 Billion Last Year; The Other 980 Lost Money

[MNeagle]

An oligopoly of Goldman, BofA, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Citi and Wells Fargo is flourishing.


Focus hard on this shocking Wall Street reality: The top six bank holding companies earned an aggregate of $51 billion in pretax income in 2009. We're talking about JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Wells Fargo.

All of this pretax income can be attributed to their trading revenues of $59.7 billion. The proprietary trading operations of an oligopoly of banks, saved from disaster by Uncle Sam's largesse and subsidized with cheap money from the central bank, was the single driving force behind the restoration of their fortunes and the renewed surge in their stock prices.

For those willing to go long when the outlook was the bleakest, they've banked a double in JPMorgan Chase ( JPM - news - people ), scored a quadruple in Citigroup ( C - news - people ) and nearly a quintuple in BofA.

Some of the other 980 bank holding companies--like Bank of New York Mellon ( BK - news - people ), PNC Financial Services, U.S. Bancorp ( USB - news - people ) and M&T Bank ( MTB - news - people )--lost an aggregate of $19 billion for the 2009 year. Bank of New York Mellon had the seventh-largest trading revenue--it was just 1.6% of the total. By comparison, Goldman Sachs ( GS - news - people ) had 36.2%, Bank of America ( BAC - news - people ) 18.8%, JPMorgan Chase 15.4%, Morgan Stanley ( MS - news - people ) 11.3%, Citigroup 6.9% and Wells Fargo ( WFC - news - people ) 4.2%.

Trading Revenue at U.S. Bank Holding Companies in 2009
All data from December 2009 FR Y-9C filings. Dollar amounts in millions.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/06/03/goldman-sachs-citigroup-markets-lenzner-morgan-stanley.html

more: http://www.forbes.com/2010/06/03/goldman-sachs-citigroup-markets-lenzner-morgan-stanley.html

[Neuro]

The playing field is not level.

[k-os]

This is infuriating. The participants and perpetrators of the housing bubble and scam are the only recipients of profits when the bubble burst. :redfc

[TPTB]

This is what is rather obliquely known as Finance Capitalism.

[gunDriller]

HSBC USA has got to be on that list, of banks making money.

[Neuro]

This is infuriating. The participants and perpetrators of the housing bubble and scam are the only recipients of profits when the bubble burst. :redfc
Yes the biggest criminals were deemed by the masterminds at the Federal Reserve to be to big to fail. Coincidentally they also own the Federal Reserve... All the other banks will go under, they are doomed!

[DMac]

The name of the game is bailout and it's not just for countries anymore!

[SLV^GLD]

HSBC USA has got to be on that list, of banks making money.
Do you know what HSBC stands for? If so, what makes you think tacking USA on the end actually makes them a US bank?