U.S. banks have taken a beating to their public images lately, between Occupy Wall Street protests and a wave of customers moving their money to credit unions.
Their bottom lines, though? Well, those are looking pretty good.
Banks just posted their highest quarterly profits in four years, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, with a net income of $35 billion. That's a whopping 49-percent increase from the same quarter last year. This was the industry's ninth consecutive profitable quarter, the Journal notes.
It's not that banks are lending a lot of new money, however. The gains have come as the economy's gradual recovery has reduced banks' need to set aside large amounts of cash to cover losses on bad loans. Still, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday that bank purchases of risky, leveraged loans has also risen to its highest level in four years.
What else are banks doing with their growing profits, at a time when they're under public pressure for perceived excesses, including their outsize influence in Washington?
Spending more money on lobbyists, of course!
An analysis by the Charlotte Observer, hometown paper of Bank of America, found that "the money banks spend on lobbying is on pace to reach a record high again this year as the industry battles to weaken or repeal hundreds of rules being crafted by federal regulators." From the story:
At this time last year, the commercial banking industry had spent about $42 million on lobbying, the center's data show. So far this year, the figure stands at nearly $47 million. Should this year's pace continue, 2011 will be the sixth straight year that commercial bank lobbying has set a record, according to the (Center for Responsive Politics, a research group that tracks federal lobbying activity).
rest at http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/11/22/banks_spending_on_lobbyists_hits_record_high_amid_rising_profits.html?from=rss/&wpisrc=newsletter_slatest
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