Monday, April 13, 2009

Free Money Good for Bank Earnings, says Faber

Ya gotta love 1440 Wall Street's headline, it gets to the nub of the issue. We had a more pedestrian version in December, ""Mom, Ben Bernanke Likes Bankers Better than He Likes You" and the late Bennet Sedacca was blunt in an email to the proprietor of Investment Postcards from Cape Town, Prieur du Plessis:

The “Fed has declared war on prudence and savers and rekindled the ‘Moral Hazard Card'"

Here's the headline story:
Sooner or later we will get around to recapitalizing the banks - while you might get to eat free government cheese, the banks get free money. And according to widely quoted pundit Marc Faber, it will keep this market aloft it appears despite the overbought stochastics and whiny bears:

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index may rise 17 percent to 1,000 in the next three months as government spending boosts bank profits, investor Marc Faber said.

“You have essentially a government that gives financials free money at the expense of the taxpayer,” Faber said. “With this free money, they may actually have decent earnings in the near future.”
...MORE, including StockJockey's comment on Mr. Faber's apparent flip-flop from his pronouncement of a week ago.