By my calculation, the two largest U.S. banks, Citi (C) and Bank of America (C), have over the last year lost roughly as much in market capitalization as is the current value of the other six U.S. banks combined.
To be specific, Citi and BofA have together lost $296-billion in market capitalization over the last year, while JPMorgan (JPM), Wells Fargo (WFC), Bank of New York (BK), Wachovia (WB), WaMu (WM), and U.S. Bancorp (USB) currently have a remaining combined capitalization of $283-billion. Staggering stuff.
Wow People…
one bright spot is that it looks like that wonderful stimulus package didn’t do shit. Credit Card payments were up when the money was sent out…
Tax rebates appear to be helping Americans pay down their credit card debt, according to a new report from Standard & Poor’s.
The rate at which obligors pay down their outstanding balances and determines how quickly investors are paid out under adverse conditions, improved 100 bps to 19.7% in May, a four-month high since January 2008, S&P said.
Tax rebate checks may have aided the improvement, along with more collection days in May compared with April.
More than 80% of the credit-card trusts tracked by S&P reported higher payment rates in May, and more than 40% of the trusts recorded payment rates exceeding 20%.
Delinquencies in the 30- and 60-plus-day categories were down 10 bps to 4.3% and 3.1%, respectively, while 90-plus-day delinquencies were unchanged at 2.2%.
I heard on the radio the other day they are waiting to see how this one does before they decide on another one. Could you imagine?