Word: bankes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Charge cards have been around since the 1920s, when service stations, department stores and hotel chains began offering them to automobile-loving consumers who didn't want to trek back to their hometown bank to get cash. But it wasn't until the postwar boom of the 1950s that credit cards really caught on. In 1950, Diners Club issued its first card--made of cardboard--for use in 27 restaurants in New York City. A year later, nearly 20,000 Americans carried it in their wallet. American Express, which had specialized in traveler's checks, created its card...
Mere months after the financial system almost collapsed, banks are making money again. One after the other, they've reported big profits for the first quarter: $4.2 billion at Bank of America, $3 billion at Wells Fargo, $2.4 billion at JPMorgan Chase, $1.8 billion at Goldman Sachs, even $1.6 billion at Citigroup - which lost $18.7 billion...
...past includes bad mortgage loans, collateralized debt obligations and all manner of other lunkheaded lending decisions. It was also characterized by a 15-year decline in the net interest margin, a core measure of bank profitability that is the difference between what banks pay to borrow and what they charge to lend. The net interest margin is partly a product of interest rates: banks borrow short term and lend long term, so when long-term interest rates drop below short-term rates (as happened three times in the past 15 years), margins are squeezed. But another big factor has been...
Much of the shadow-banking system is now gone or in hibernation. Two of its leading institutions, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, have become commercial banks. With fewer competitors, banks have a lot more pricing power, while Federal Reserve lending programs and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) guarantees of deposits and bank-bond issues have sharply lowered funding costs. Net interest margins appear to be turning the corner, and as a result, it is not inconceivable that banks will be able to steadily earn their way out of their problems over the next few years...
...question is, Would that be a good thing? Many outside observers have argued that the financial system needs shock treatment, in which the government takes over more banks and forces the entire banking system to flush bad assets from its books. If you priced all bank assets at current market values, the banking system would be insolvent, the reasoning goes, so make them take the hit and then press restart. Those with actual banking experience, though, tend to be dubious about market pricing and counsel patience. "The banks have a lot of practice at working out troubled assets, and most...