Markets Finance A Weak Economy Takes the Air Out of Bank Earnings

摘要

When the financial crisis hit and the economy swooned, Washington first focused on saving the banking industry. Two U.S. Treasury Secretaries and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernan-ke fimneled capital and cheap loans to banks with the goal of boosting lending and powering a robust economic revival. It hasn't worked out that way. While those policies benefited Wall Street, they failed to produce a sustained recovery on Main Street, where the unemployment rate remains above 9 percent. Now a struggling U.S. economy may sap bank earnings and lead to industry job losses and lower stock prices. "The political class is fixated on how the banking system caused the problem in the first place and therefore how it will have to cure it in the future-that if you get the banks working again, the economy works," says Robert B. Albertson, chief strategist at Sandier O'Neill & Partners in New York. "It drives me into silly laughter. It's the other way around."