These 6 Largest Washington DC Corps generated a Total Pretax Loss in 2009 of $68.7 bil. Their Total Pretax Loss in 2011 of $9.4 bil was a massive $59.4 bil improvement from the 2009 loss. The main driver here was Fannie Mae.
The remaining 5 Largest DC Corps other than Fannie Mae generated a Total Pretax Income of $3.8 bil in 2011, which was up a very robust 78% over such amount two years earlier in 2009. Danaher and The Carlyle Group were the main drivers of this very robust profit growth.
Now I wanted to see if these incredibly strong earnings improvement also applied to the even smaller Washington DC Corps, which file with the SEC.
I found 5 Washington DC headquartered Smaller Corps filing with the SEC, which had Pretax Income or Pretax Loss of $10 mil or more in any of the most recent three years, and which weren't included in the 6 Largest DC Corps. Thus, these 5 Smaller DC Corps also did not have Pretax Income or Pretax Loss of $100 mil or more in any of the most recent three years.
How did they do? Well, these 5 Smaller DC Corps generated total earnings growth in the most recent two years of an even more robust 151%.
Clearly, Washington DC citizens should be very proud of their many superb DC companies, of all sizes.
Yeah, the Obama Administration created a very robust US economic environment, which permitted these fine DC companies of all sizes to do just fantastically on the earnings front in the most recent two years.
One clear conclusion here is that just like all over the country, DC headquartered Corps performed much better on the earnings front in 2010 (up 91%), when the US House was under Democratic control, than in 2011 (down 50%), when the US House was under Republican control.
It is pretty clear to me that in 2010, a Moderate Democratic President, coupled most importantly with a US House in Democratic hands, but also having a US Senate in Democratic hands, and further with having more State Governors and State Legislatures in Moderate Democratic hands, did wonders for corporate earnings growth in 2010. With this political structure, economic stimulus, both much needed business income tax stimulus and wise, carefully-vetted US Government investment spending, can occur on a robust scale. And this very strong economic stimulus was in full throttle starting in the 4Q 2009, and did Corporations ever reap the benefit of this by generating exceptionally strong profits.
The worse thing that can happen after a financial meltdown, and near depression, is a US government that just waits for the free markets to correct themselves.....a laissez-faire approach, so favored by so many Republicans. Fortunately for the country, the exact opposite to that wisely happened in 2009 and 2010.
But then in 2011 and the first half of 2012, the US government was unfortunately forced into a laissez-faire economic approach, due to an uncompromising Very Conservative US Congress stopping nearly every economic initiative of the Obama Administration. The focus of the US Congress was almost singularly on austerity, when the improving, but still clearly struggling, US economy was shouting out for more economic stimulus, wisely designed.
This massive negative earnings reversal starting in 2011 was driven by a Republican-controlled US House, coupled with the very frequent use of the filibuster strategy by the Republicans in the US Senate, which both stopped cold, with devastating consequences to the middle class, and those trying to get into the middle class, nearly every economic initiative of the Obama Administration.
In deriving Pretax Income, I start with Pretax Income under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), and then exclude several clearly unusual very large items relative to Pretax Income, such as Asset Impairments, and Gains and Losses on both Debt Retirements and Asset Dispositions.
I use Pretax Income rather than After-tax Net Income, since so much of the change in effective income tax rates just happens due to financial engineering.
I excluded Corps in the Development Stage.
And below here is the Pretax Income (PTI) or Pretax Loss of each of these 6 Largest and 5 Smaller Washington DC Corporations for each of the most recent three years, along with the related percentage changes in earnings.
| US House | US House | Obama | ||||
| Republican | Democratic | Bump | ||||
| Control | Control | Two | ||||
| PTI(L) | PTI(L) | Year | ||||
| % | % | % | ||||
| Change | Change | Change | ||||
| PTI(L) | PTI(L) | PTI(L) | 2011 | 2010 | 2011 | |
| 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | vs | vs | vs | |
| mils $s | mils $s | mils $s | 2010 | 2009 | 2009 | |
| Washington DC | ||||||
| Largest Corps | ||||||
| Fannie Mae | (16,945) | (14,100) | (73,007) | -20% | 81% | 77% |
| The Rest Largest Corps | ||||||
| Danaher | 2,448 | 1,939 | 1,326 | 26% | 46% | 85% |
| Carlyle Group LP | 1,183 | 1,694 | 678 | -30% | 150% | 74% |
| Washington Post | 284 | 590 | 245 | -52% | 141% | 16% |
| Farmer Mac | 45 | 66 | 152 | -32% | -57% | -70% |
| Intelsat | (163) | (346) | (272) | 53% | -27% | 40% |
| Total all 5 The Rest | 3,797 | 3,943 | 2,129 | -4% | 85% | 78% |
| Total all 6 Largest Corps | (9,351) | (6,214) | (68,749) | -50% | 91% | 86% |
| Smaller Corps | ||||||
| DuPont Fabros Technology | 79 | 44 | 17 | 80% | 159% | 365% |
| Advisory Board Co | 39 | 28 | 25 | 39% | 12% | 56% |
| Liquidity Services | 36 | 27 | 16 | 33% | 69% | 125% |
| CoStar Group | 23 | 24 | 33 | -4% | -27% | -30% |
| Cogent Communications | 6 | (1) | (18) | -700% | 94% | 133% |
| Total all 5 Smaller Corps | 183 | 122 | 73 | 50% | 67% | 151% |
| Grand Total all 11 Corps | (9,168) | (6,092) | (68,676) | -50% | 91% | 87% |
