Word: stocked
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...bank's stock has fallen more in value during the past four months than Bank of America's. The combined value of its shares is now $37 billion. That's $123 billion less than they were worth at the end of September. In the third quarter, BofA was forced to write down $4.4 billion in loans, or about 1.8% of its loan portfolio. Compared with what some of its competitors wrote down, that wasn't a heck of a lot; Citigroup, for instance, had a $13.2 billion charge in the same quarter, primarily related to loan losses. But the relatively...
...Another way banks sought to boost their profits - at least those available to shareholders - was through stock buybacks. Investors cheer buybacks, because they shrink the number of outstanding shares, boosting a company's profits per share and usually its stock price. But corporate stock purchases also decrease banks' capital, because their earnings are used to purchase shares rather than being retained as cash. Worse, sometimes banks borrow money in order to buy back shares, upping their leverage and lowering their capital at the same time. In the past four years alone, the nation's largest banks, as defined by Standard...
...going to pay it back. When a bank's loan losses are greater than its income, it has to take money from its shareholders' equity account to make up the difference. That's a big deal for a company's investors. If shareholders' equity is wiped out, their stock is effectively worthless. So investors watch this account intensely; if they think shareholders' equity is headed to zero, so too is a bank's stock...
...certainly doesn't do anything to encourage banks to make more loans. Yes, banks have gotten nearly $300 billion in money from the government, and that's a lot of dough. But it's not free dough. In return for federal cash, the government has taken preferred-stock shares as the firm's markers. Unlike common stock, which is the kind you or I would buy from a broker, preferreds have to eventually be paid back, so they are really loans, not additional capital. (See which country has the best bailout plans...
...banks keep the loans and troubled bonds for now and instead provide the banks with insurance policies guaranteeing that the government will swallow a good deal of future credit losses. But a similar deal that the Fed struck with Citi did little to boost that company's stock or stave off fears that it may soon go under...