JP Morgan, Intel Earnings Boost the Market

Who knew that force feeding banks free money, while allowing them to hike rates and fees and easing mark to market rules would provide such an earnings bonanza? JP Morgan didn't miss a trick this quarter posting a profit of $3.59 billion or 82 cents a share, handily beating analysts estimates of 52 cents a share. Revenues were up 81% to $26.62 billion. A sure sign that the bank's good fortune isn't necessarily being passed on to the rest of the economy is that loan balances continued to shrink despite a stabilization in assets and deposits. Credit-loss provisions which were $9.8 billion, up $3.1 billion from a year earlier and $100 million from the previous quarter painted a more sober view of the bank's business. Net charge-offs surged to 6.29% from 3.39%.

Meanwhile, in Techland, Intel, the chip giant, served up better than expected earnings as well, posting net income of $1.86 billion on $9.39 billion in revenue. Although these numbers were largely better than expected, revenues were still down 8% year over year. Intel also raised its revenue guidance for the fourth quarter to around $10.1 billion.

Now that everything is back to normal, and Wall Street is talking about doling out record bonuses again as if nothing ever happened and they didn't cause a financial meltdown that wrecked our economy and required government intervention, can we please ratchet back some of the crazy monetary policy the Fed is doling out? Please? Like maybe before the dollar goes to zero and gold goes to $5,000 an ounce and oil to $250 a barrel?