Wall St. Firms Have Already Earned More Under Obama Than During Entire Bush Presidency: Report

[onehandle]

Source: Huffington Post/Washington Post

Wall Street firms have earned more in profits so far under President Obama than during all eight years of George W. Bush's presidency, according to The Washington Post.

The securities industry earned $82.52 billion in profits during the first two and a half years of Obama's presidency, compared to $77.17 billion total under President Bush, according to data compiled by The Washington Post, giving legs to the claim that even while Obama has publicly denounced "fat cat bankers on Wall Street," banks are now as profitable as ever.

But the discrepancy is in large part due to the $24.75 billion loss within the securities industry during the financial crisis of 2008 -- the last year of Bush's Presidency -- followed by a gain of $49.53 billion during the country's first year under Obama. That was a period when banks felt pressure to pay back bailout money, according to Gerard Cassidy, a banking analyst at RBC Capital Markets, in a 2009 interview with Bloomberg News.

Federal regulators did cave to Wall Street pressure in the aftermath of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, however, according to a report from the program's Special Inspector General. The report alleged federal banking regulators under Obama allowed Citigroup, Wells Fargo, PNC, and Bank of America to leave the government's bailout program early in 2009, even though the Federal Reserve and the FDIC had recommended they spend more time shoring up their assets. The banks had lobbied to leave TARP early in part because they wanted to avoid restrictions on executive compensation, according to the report.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/07/bank-earnings-obama_n_1079482.html

[louis-t]

1. So, why haven't the 'jobs creators' created any jobs?

:shrug:

[midnight]

2. Yet that wealth is not enough to satisfy the elite.... They need to nickle and dime

every last fragile person on this planet... Let's bail out the working people and the poor...

[Vincardog]

3. Wall Street no longer earns its' money it extracts it

[onehandle]

5. Why create when you can collect?

They don't make a damn thing.

If we had a caste system, they would be the 'untouchables.'

Call me a class warrior, I don't care. Fuck those guys.

[PoliticAverse]

4. Your bailout dollars at work... n/t

[ProSense]

6. Wall Street

is always more prosperous under Democratic Presidents. Still, from the OP article:

<...>

Nonetheless, major U.S. banks have struggled this year on the whole, with Goldman Sachs reporting its second loss ever as a public company and BofA's stock price plunging over the last ten months. The financial industry has already announced a slew of mass layoffs, and the New York comptroller recently estimated that Wall Street could lose 10,000 more jobs by the end of 2012.

The Republican National Committee slammed the Obama administration following the Post's story...

Hope they're not looking for sympathy.

Think Progress:

<...>

Despite this evidence that banks haven’t suffered under Obama, Republicans and Wall Street traders and lobbyists are attempting to make Wall Street’s windfalls even larger. Industry analysts told the Post that the Dodd-Frank financial reform law will stabilize the future of the financial industry even as it has “crimped bank profits” slightly. But that hasn’t stopped lobbyists from spending millions of dollars to make its rules and regulations more Wall Street friendly, and it hasn’t stopped Republican presidential candidates from lining up to support the law’s wholesale repeal, even if they aren’t always quite sure what the law actually does.

In fact, Bank of America tried to get around Dodd-Frank.

[onehandle]

7. If I had the means, I would broadcast commercials from coast to coast...

...touting how much better Democrats have been historically for this country.

I would also get it into talking points for any elected Democrat who's ever in front of a camera.

[Graveyard]

8. Good news does not come around these days

sigh