Adventures in Economic Journamalism

In this case, it's Douglas McIntyre of Time Magazine, who looks at a positive quarterly report from Wells Fargo, so he looks at the big sh$&pile, and thinks that there is a pony in there,thus declaring that the banking crisis to be over.

Not unsurprisingly, this ignores the the backdoor bailout through AIG, the fact Wells is deriving profits from a special tax loophole that allows it to write off WaMu's old losses, that Wells is rather healthy by the standards of the big banks, and the fact that their worthless assets effect solvency, not quarterly profit statements.

Making a quarterly profit is easy for a bank that is not writing down bad loans as it is supposed to.

Posted via mobile phone.