Underpants gnomes

Phase one: Collect a massive Government bailout
Phase two: ???????
Phase three: Never ending profit!!!

Bank of America Corp. posted strong first-quarter earnings Monday as higher revenue from the purchase of Merrill Lynch & Co. helped offset a surge in credit costs. Wall Street, concerned about banks' continuing loan problems, looked past Bank of America's profit and fell sharply.

Bank of America's results surpassed analysts' expectations. But like other banking companies, it is still stuggling with fallout from the recession, taking a hefty $13.4 billion provision for credit losses.

The bank's stock fell $1.32, or 12.5 percent, to $9.28 as the overall stock market slid. Although Wall Street was happy last week with better-than-expected results from JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Citigroup Inc., banking companies generally benefited during the quarter from unusually strong bond trading, a trend not expected to continue while loan problems persist.

That's right, you can be a Wall Street financial genius as well. As long as you get enough government money to exceed your losses and combine it with methods that are unsustainable in the current economic climate, you too can pretend that you made a profit and are thus a CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY~! Spend a couple of mil redecorating the office, pretend all that hate towards you and your kind is just envy of your massive capitalist penis, and start up the credit default swaps on mortgages because surely this will never happen again.

At least all this bailing out and ten billion dollar loans/writedowns/shakedowns are providing their intended purpose: helping out the citizens affected by the recession fake balance sheet profits. At least now, what with them being so flush with cash and profitable, the banks have decided to increase lending like they were supposed to. They haven't? Well, who could have foreseen?

This is all working out so well for everyone who isn't a banker or derivatives trader.