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Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup And Bank of America Present Fun With Numbers
In our continuing effort to take every opportunity presented to hammer away at the banking industry the staff of YouThinkWhat will now suggest they way we see this whole banking debacle….or is that boondoggle (??)
After we seeing the reports of the amazing profits made by the likes of major surviving banking institutions Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and, our very special favorite, Bank of America we wondered why the banks have not used the same enchanting number manipulation on the mortgage, credit card or checking accounts of John and Jane Q. Public.Wouldn’t it be just swell to know the entire month of say, December, with all the regular bills for necessities like food, shelter, utilities and clothing that came due, plus all the money that was spent for the children’s holiday presents, and associated celebration activities, when those bills came due in January they were simply Poof! disappeared!?
That’s what Goldman Sachs did. Goldman Sachs changed its reporting calendar thereby, obliterating a huge, what would be considered a really big loss, in the minds of mere mortal beings, of a $1.5 billion during that thirty-one day period.
We know a man who is a sleight of hand artist. His name is Mystical Mel. I bet he’d give anything to be able to perform a feat of that magnitude of amazement.
Our favorite financial skank establishment, Skank of America sold its shares in China Construction Bank. That’s perfectly legal we are told by experts in the matter. To have the esteemed banking executive Ken Lewis say the profit from the transaction isas “a testament to the value and breadth of the franchise” is just os much hooey!
According to Sydney Finkelstein, professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, Bank of America booked a $2.2 billion gain by increasing the value of Merrill Lynch’s assets acquired last fall to prices consderably higher than Merrill had rated them.
Professor Finkelstein, says this strategy is legal but he believes it is also,
“perfectly delusional, because some day soon these assets will be written down to their fair value, and it won’t be pretty.”
That’s why we ask, “Why should the banks be the only ones to benefit from all this fancy mathematical cipherin’?” Let the common man and woman derive some of the perks of this convoluted arithmetic.
We realize it’s this kind of record keeping that got us in this economic banking crisis predicament, but why should the bankers be allowed to have all of the fun? if we’re going to hell in a hand basket let’s make the most of it and happily boogie our way to the final financial disaster.
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