http://market-ticker.denninger.net/
So Wells comes out this morning and says they’re going to make a “record” profit, claiming an expected 55 cents (.vs. mid 30s expectation)

It must be nice to be able to keep loans on the books at whatever price you feel like, receive billions of taxpayer money including “assistance” in rolling up Wachovia, and then turn out to not need it, right?

That is, if these numbers are accurate.

Wells premarket is ramping from $14.89 at the close yesterday and now trading premarket at $18.10, up over $3 or some 30%.

This leads one inescapably to the following:

Either Wells is lying (obfuscating losses through unrealistic marks, etc) OR
These “bailouts” were no such thing – they were a simple and transparent looting operation by the banks that is now showing up directly in “earnings” (and will shortly show up in the bonuses of executives too!)
So which is it folks?

“Is this $3 billion profit before or after you account for the $25 billion in bailout money. Revenue is $20 billion, we gave them $25 billion, that’s a net of -$5 billion. Where’s the $3 billion in profit coming from?”