Posted on 03/10/2009 12:54:56 PM PDT by flyfree
U.S. stocks rose about 5 percent on Tuesday after Citigroup said it was profitable in the first two months of 2009 and a key lawmaker said he expects the restoration of the uptick rule. Citigroup's Chief Executive Vikram Pandit also said in a memo the beleaguered bank was confident about its capital strength. Shares of Citigroup, in which the government recently took a large common equity stake to help shore it up, jumped 35.2 percent to $1.42. Citi's stock has fallen about 80 percent year to date.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
$180 billion of govt funds made them “profitable”
ye, I’d be profitable too.
I heard one analyst say today that the Citi report was rather misleading. His take was who couldn’t make money if you were using interest free money to loan out at a decent interest rate.
Shorts are covering today. Citi scared them a little.
Watch the stocks go higher and higher so Zero can look good when he makes his first State of the Union address.
Translation: Soros and his operatives have made as much money as they could on the downside, destroyed the economy, defeated the Republicans, instituted Fascist Socialism in the US, (through the suspension of the uptick rule), so they don't need that anymore.
Citi's cash flow is plus $45 billion a quarter and has been for nearly a year.
You all sound like DU when Bush was in. Talking down the good.
Obama approval numbers are down....and Voila! The stock market soars in one day because Citi, who got a major bailout and tied to dems says they have a profit.
Now there are jobs out there too.
Problem solved.
From the article - Bernanke wants to “improve” the Mark To Market Rule, rather than kill it.
Everybody marks to market. It’s reality and it’s also the responsible and ethical thing to do.
To not have to mark to market is simply fraud. Which is why the Democrats want to do away with the rule.
No mark to market? Who knows what a portfolio is worth? Nothing to see here, move on.
What else are we to believe? That the purpose of accounting, to track everything a business does monetarily. If it doesn’t work, then why use that system.
He's right that you can't lose money borrowing at zero to lend at high rates to people who actually pay it back.
The conclusion, however, is that the whole "aaah, everyone will go bankrupt, we're all gonna die!" panic of the last 3-5 months was completely overblown nonsense.
I've been actively trying to avoid total calamity in my holdings since last summer...I've seen these bumps...in this economy, they don't last.
I'm staying on the short side for now.
Same people that call one day drops the Obama stock plunge. Neither of these day to day, or even week to week fluctuations have anything to do with the chosen one.
income of $3.25b?
taxpayers gave them $180 billion
Could be one last scam they are running to allow the baron class of investors to use the escape pods.
That said, hopefully this is based on real numbers and the turnaround has indeed begun. I have my doubts, though.
On any rational accounting basis, the major banks are sound and will earn large profits in the future, in real dollars, provided only that they are not seized at gunpoint by idiots from the government.
I believe what Citi and B of A tell me about their cash flows and their breakdowns, about their charge offs and their loan loss experiences. I do not believe GAAP "earnings" crapola, mark to default accounting, projecting losses forever provisioning, pretending that liabilities that cost 2-3 are worth more than assets that pay 6-8, etc, etc, ad nauseum - in the slightest.
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