Bank of America shines amidst the reopening of the U.S. economy. Although not America's most profitable bank, it draws its dynamism from its clients and not just from mergers and acquisitions.
"We fought the competition and we won,"* Bank of America Corp. boss Brian Moynihan triumphantly declared on the announcement of its impressive quarterly earnings. With shares up 3.2%, its better-than-predicted results cannot be explained merely by the lifting of the pandemic lockdown.
The strength of Bank of America's interest income, meaning interest paid to it minus interest paid to clients, has reached 8% compared to 5% at best for JP Morgan Chase & Co.’s and Wells Fargo & Company’s figures online, with Citigroup Inc.’s a little below them.
Bank of America has succeeded in raising its revenues in tandem with the reopening of the U.S. economy while taking its slice of the pie from mergers and acquisitions.
This economic upswing is not only an encouraging signal for Wall Street, but also favors Bank of America's strategy as the best one for Uncle Sam's four largest banking networks since the end of 2019.
A Way To Go
The CEO of Charlotte’s bank has spent the past few years stitching up the tears from the last great financial crisis, complicated by the resale of Merrill Lynch.
Yet Bank of America has a way to go in matching the profitability of the leading firm, JP Morgan Chase, which provided Moynihan's counterpart there, Jamie Dimon, a much better romance with the stock market, with shares earning 1.9 times their value versus 1.5 times for Bank of America’s.
*Editor’s note: This quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.
The challenge for Washington is no longer whether it possesses sufficient capabilities, but whether the political system can align those capabilities behind a coherent long-term priority.
So, to succeed in the trough of graft, a politician must have a profusion of scandals, so many of them all at once such that they would eventually overwhelm the system’s capacity to cope.
The Iranian regime remains capable of funding its power mechanisms and suppressing opposition, while the United States ... suffers from limited political space.
European autonomy - military, technological, economic, and financial - is beginning to take shape as Europe hedges against current and future fluctuations in [U.S.] policy.