Wednesday, March 25, 2020

Big Four US Banks Are the Main Beneficiaries of the US Senate Proposed Virus Stimulus Bill ..... They Are Clearly Being Bailed Out To the Tune of Hundreds of Billions of Dollars

In the proposed US Senate Coronavirus bill is $500 bil of bailouts of large US Corps and $350 bil of bailouts of middle-sized and smaller US businesses.

These troubled businesses are now predominately financed by the US financial industry with much of it being financed by the Big Four Banks ..... JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup.

If nothing happens, these troubled companies would file for bankruptcy and the Bank financiers making the loans to and investments in these troubled companies would take the massive economic hit to their reported earnings.

That is how US capitalism is supposed to work and that is how it worked on five occasions in the past for the Trump Organizations.

But by its actions, the US Senate Bill is removing a substantial amount of the economic risk that these banks have in these troubled US businesses.

That's not a bad deal ..... make loans, collect the interest revenues for years and when the companies run into financial trouble, the US Government removes your economic risk on the troubled loans that you made.  It's a no lose situation for the US banks.

And on top of that, these four banks are very high on the list of US Corps which used their reduced US federal income taxes received under the Trump Tax Cuts Act to buy back their common stocks to the tune of $169 Bil in 2019 and 2018 combined.  When you buy back your common stock in amounts like this, your financial solvency is being substantially weakened.

From SEC filings, the below table shows these annual stock buybacks of these four US Big Banks.

Stock Stock Stock
Buybacks Buybacks Buybacks
Big Four US Banks FYE 2019 FYE 2018 FYE 2017
Annual Stock Buybacks mils $ mils $ mils $
JPMorgan Chase           24,001         19,983         15,410
Bank of America           28,144         20,094         12,814
Wells Fargo           24,533         20,633           9,908
Citigroup           17,571         14,433         14,541
Totals           94,249         75,143         52,673