美国银行业利润创近五年新高

    金融危机或许已经结束，但信贷紧缩有没有结束还不明朗。

    上周四，美国联邦存款保险公司（FDIC）宣布，银行业利润创近五年新高。今年前三个月，美国银行业实现利润353亿美元，相比上年同期增长66亿美元，几乎是两年前同期的翻番。不过，利润仍未回到危机前水平，比2007年第二季度仍低了14亿美元。正是从2007年第二季度左右，次贷市场开始崩溃。

    显然，美国银行业正在继续从金融危机中复苏。FDIC指出，存在破产风险的银行数量已降至772家。这是该数字连续第五个季度下降。FDIC的“问题银行”名单曾一度逼近1,000家。而且，问题贷款总量也在下降。FDIC表示，第一季度银行业注销贷款210亿美元，为四年来最低。FDIC衡量银行资本金的一项关键指标——银行拥有的可以覆盖不良贷款和其他损失的资金——则创下了历史新高。这是一个好消息，但问题也随之而来：为何它没有超过危机前的年份，当时我们都相信银行业是健康的。

    银行业的稳定对于美国经济显然是个利好因素。当策略师们历数为何他们认为美国股市将上涨的各项因素时，总会谈到这一点。但银行利润只是诸多非负面因素之一。银行业利润对你我，对经济如此重要的唯一原因是它会鼓励更多放贷，相应地创造更多就业并推高房价。我们还没有看到这一点，至少没有持续地呈现。几周前，一季度贷款缩减。FDIC的最新报告印证了这一点。下降最多的是信用卡贷款和住房贷款。这意味着银行业仍是抑制楼市复苏的因素之一。我们还没有走出困境。

    译者：早稻米

    The financial crisis could be over, but it's not clear the credit crunch is.

    On Thursday, the FDIC said that bank profits were the highest they have been in nearly five years. U.S. banks earned $35.3 billion in the first three months of the year. That was up $6.6 billion from the same quarter a year ago, and nearly double what they earned two years ago. Still, bottom lines have yet to return to pre-crisis levels. Banks earned $1.4 billion less than they did in the second quarter of 2007, which is about the time the sub-prime mortgage market began to bust.

    What's clear is that banks are continuing to heal from the financial crisis. The number of banks that the FDIC says are in jeopardy of failing dropped to 772. That was the fifth quarter in a row that number has dropped. The FDIC's "problem bank" list once neared 1,000. What's more problem loans at all banks fell as well. The FDIC said banks charged off $21 billion in the first quarter, which the lowest in four years. A key FDIC measure of bank capital - the amount of money banks have to cover bad loans and other losses - reached an all-time high, which is welcome news but also begs the question of why it wasn't higher in the years before the crisis, when we all believed banks were healthy.

    Stability of the banking sector is clearly a positive for the U.S. economy. It's always one of the talking points you hear from strategists when they reel off the reasons they think stocks are headed higher. But bank profits alone are really only one of those things that are not a negative. The only reason banks profits really matter to you and me and the economy is that it should lead to more lending, and in turn more jobs and higher housing prices. We haven't actually seen that yet, at least not consistently. As I wrote a few weeks ago, lending shrunk in the first quarter. The FDIC report confirms that fact. The biggest drops were in credit card lending and home loans. That means banks remain a headwind for the housing market rebound. We're still not out of the woods yet.