Bailout Watch

BAILOUT WATCH….So how’s that bank recapitalization going? Are big banks going to use their $125 billion in federal cash to expand lending and unfreeze the credit markets? The New York Times reports:

“There is no express statutory requirement that says you must make this amount of loans,” said John C. Dugan, the comptroller of the currency. “But the economics work so that it is in their interest to do so.”

Mr. Dugan added that he would not examine how the banks used the money, but he said their actions would “be open to the court of public opinion.”

Ah, yes, the court of public opinion. The titans of Wall Street are famous for their humble submission to public opinion. That should work out very well indeed.

Or not. Especially if it doesn’t matter because they still don’t have any money:

Lenders have been pulling back on credit lines for businesses, mortgages, home equity loans and credit card offers, and analysts said that trend was unlikely to be reversed by the government’s money.

“I don’t think that the market wants to see that capital being put to work to leverage the business up again,” Roger Freeman, an analyst at Barclays Capital, which acquired parts of the now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers last month, told The Times. “My expectation is it’s quarters off, not months off, before you see that capital being put to work.”

….In the case of the nine-largest commercial banks — Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Washington Mutual and Wachovia — profits from early 2004 until the middle of 2007 were a combined $305 billion. But since July 2007, those banks have marked down their valuations on loans and other assets by just over that amount.

In other words, their net profit for the past four years is already negative, and by the time this is all over their net profit for the entire past decade or three will be negative. So keep that government cash coming. $125 billion is only the beginning.