Wall Street’s Engines of Profit Are Slowing Down

[Demeter]

Source: NYT

Even after taxpayer bailouts restored bankers’ profits and pay, the great Wall Street money machine is decelerating. Big financial institutions, including commercial banks, are still making a lot of money. But given unease in the financial markets and the economy, brokerages and investment banks are not making nearly as much as their executives, employees and investors had hoped.

After an unusually sharp slowdown in trading this summer, analysts are rethinking their profit forecasts for 2010...Worldwide, the number of stock offerings is down 15 percent from this time last year, while bond issuance is off 25 percent, according to Capital IQ, a research firm. Based on these trends, Ms. Whitney predicts that annual revenue from Wall Street’s main businesses will drop 25 percent, to around $42 billion in 2010, from $56 billion last year.

While the numbers will not be known until after the third quarter ends and financial companies begin reporting earnings in October, the pace of trading this summer was slow even by normal summer standards. Trading in shares listed on the New York Stock Exchange was down by 11 percent in July from 2009 levels, and August volume was off nearly 30 percent...

With less than two weeks to go in the third quarter, companies will be hard-pressed to fulfill earlier, more optimistic expectations...As a result, executives, portfolio managers and analysts say that even the mighty Goldman Sachs, which posted a profit every day for the first three months of the year, is unlikely to deliver the kind of profit growth that investors have come to expect...

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/business/20wall.html?ref=todayspaper

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Oh, the humanity!

[DJ13]

1. One of these days they might understand that the consumer drives the co.s on Wall St

No jobs no consumers, no consumers no profits, no profits no buyers for stocks.

I know they like to think profits derived from outsourcing is good for stocks, but the erosion of jobs and wages has a corrosive effect that has finally eaten through that bubble they've been living in.

[Trajan]

8. You got it absolutely right ...

NO nice paycheck for Momma, Dadda and Kiddy, then no nice paycheck for Mr. Capital-In-His-Trousers ...

Indonesians and Chinese and other foreign workers arent going to buy the goods that made oodles of profits for the worlds profiteers ...

The best way to stop this huge breach in the economy: WAGE BOOSTS ! ...

NOT stimulus from government .. But stimulus from the private sector ... the same wages they have suppressed for 30 years running ...

THEY killed the economy .... We workers are too stupid to NOT buy stuff if we have money ....

Fucking idiots ....

[DontTreadOnMe]

14. No Jobs, No consumers!

I was watching the early Monday business analysis on TV... the Repug Wallstreeter was trying to explain that the rich needs tax cuts, because they put that money into savings accounts.. and then the banks use rich people's savings to invest in Wall Street, and then Wall Street creates jobs... it's so simple!

[high density]

21. Companies are only focused on the next quarter, and offshoring helps those short term results

Basically these companies expect somebody else to pay the wages that we're going to buy their expensive products with. They should be prepared to follow all this money over to China and India, because things are only going to continue to decline in the USA if consumers have no money to consume with.

[babylonsister]

2. I thought they knew it all. Could this even be surprising? nt

[notadmblnd]

3. does this mean that they are running out of ways to rip us off?

[Demeter]

4. Running out of victims, I think

after all, can't get blood out of a turnip, nor a stone.

They all went to China, the blood-sucking ticks, and didn't get anywhere with the government. Would that we had that kind of resistance in ours.

[defendandprotect]

5. That's why they need the Social Security money .... isn't 80% of this all elites doing

market propping up and insider trading?

[liberation]

10. Virulent parasites tend to be very shortsighted...

... so once they suck the host dry, what are they going to do?

Once they are done raiding the SS fund, and believe me they will, what's next. There is literally nothing left to pick up from the carcass.

Yet, the greed of the American elites is such that can't be considered anything other than pathological. There is no other industrialized nation on earth with a level of wealth inequality among classes like the US.

[defendandprotect]

19. Capitalism is intended to move the wealth and natural resources from the many to the few....

They have a way to go yet!!

Welfare for the rich -- free enterprise for the poor!

[defendandprotect]

6. And, rather than speeding up ... all LABOR should be slowing down .....

[grasswire]

7. masters of the universe (eom)

[liberation]

Labor creates wealth, moving money around just creates friction.

When labor has a higher tax rate than investment, then we need to face the fact that as a society we took the wrong turn somewhere.

[w4rma]

9. Still too much money moving their way. Most of their money is still being made off of con-jobs.

They don't want to move to actual honest business that our economy needs, like lending to small businesses.

[leveymg]

11. Seems that Wall Street is the last to notice - Elvis has left the building, and he isn't

doing an encore tonight.

[Roland99]

12. What? The slots are running dry at the casinos?

[Hubert Flottz]

13. Maybe we should feel sorry for them and give them our...

Social Security money to gamble away.

[Fumesucker]

15. The SS money is already gone..

Hence the catfood commission..

[Hubert Flottz]

17. When the TRUTH about Social Security comes out...

The pitch forks will too.

[Blue_Tires]

16. they'll find a way to blame this all on taxes and anti-market regulations

[Odin2005]

18. LULZ. Greedy fuckers.

[Psephos]

20. What effect will that have on tax revenues?

A big effect. Especially at local and state levels.