Chart of the Day: It’s a Good Time to Be a Bank

The latest FDIC report is out, and I know you’ve been waiting for it. Check out how our banks are doing!

Isn’t that great? And don’t be bitter just because you and I are more likely to be getting 2 percent raises this year. America’s banks made their money the old fashioned way: they lobbied for it. The FDIC explains:

The 5,542 FDIC-insured commercial banks and savings institutions reported net income of $60.2 billion during the three months ended June 30, an increase of $12.1 billion (25.1 percent) from a year earlier. Higher net operating revenue (the sum of net interest income and noninterest income) and a lower effective tax rate contributed to the increase in industry net income. Assuming the effective tax rate before the new tax law, net income would have totaled an estimated $53.8 billion, an increase of $5.6 billion (11.7 percent) from second quarter 2017.

Without the Republican tax cut, bank earnings would have increased $5.6 billion last quarter. But with the Republican tax cut, bank earnings increased $12.1 billion. Ka ching! We should be seeing some very nice bonuses on Wall Street this year.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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