Thursday, 2 June 2011

US Banking Fun

Via Icarus at HPC, this fine summary:

[Senator Bernie]Sanders subsequently asked the Congressional Research Service to compare the emergency Fed loans with investments in government securities by the nation’s six largest bank holding companies. The study found, for example, that:

• In the 1st quarter of 2008, JPMorgan Chase had an average of $1.2 billion in outstanding Fed loans with a 2.1 percent interest rate while it held $2.2 billion in U.S. government securities with an average yield of 4.6 percent.

• In the 4th quarter of 2008, JPMorgan Chase had an average of $10.1 billion in outstanding Fed loans with a 0.6 percent interest rate while it held $10.3 billion in U.S. government securities with an average yield of 1.7 percent.

• In the 1st quarter of 2009, JPMorgan Chase had an average of $29.2 billion in outstanding Fed loans with a 0.3 percent interest rate and held $34.6 billion in U.S. government securities with an average yield of 2.1 percent...


And so on and so forth.

4 comments:

Pogo said...

It merely goes to reinforce what we've all known for a long time, namely that there are much brighter people in banking than in politics.

Lola said...

Jeezus - tell me, we're screwed? Right?

Mark Wadsworth said...

P, that's the clever bit, half the upper echelons in the US government are ex-bankers.

L, yes. But only because we let it happen.

Pogo said...

Mark - true, but all the upper echelons of banks are bankers. :-)