The NY Times published an interesting article today that declared that:

"The numbers are staggering. Between early 2004 and mid-2007, a period of unprecedented wealth on Wall Street, seven of the nation’s largest financial companies earned a combined $254 billion in profits.

But since last July, those same banks — Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley — have written down the value of the assets they hold by $107.2 billion, gutting their earnings and share prices. Worldwide, the reckoning totals $380 billion, much of which reflects a plunge in the value of tricky mortgage investments."

The article then goes on to state that the financial services core business model and money making machine has been severely compromised by the credit crisis and credit crunch:

"Even when the losses end, bank executives are looking toward a new era of lower returns, thinner profits and fewer jobs. Greater scrutiny from regulators is forcing Wall Street firms to reduce their use of leverage, or borrowed money, which had fueled profits in good times but backfired when the credit crisis struck last summer. Nearly every finance company is cutting jobs and battening down.

“They are going to have to build a new business model,” Richard X. Bove, a financial services analyst at Punk Ziegel, said of investment banks. “I do not believe those businesses have the ability to generate the kind of profit they did in recent years without all the leverage.”

This parallels my own thinking, which I spelled out in a November 2008 article entitled Financial Companies Face $1.2 Trillion Risk.

It was clear that Wall Street profits were unsustainable and that the popping of the housing bubble was the catalyst for popping an even bigger financial bubble. When Wall Street becomes an end as opposed to a means, there is trouble brewing.

What will this mean?

1. Fewer high paying financial services jobs as banks shed assets and positions.

2. Permanent lower valuations for banks and investment banks.

3. Higher long-term interest rates on credit products.

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It doesn't look like things are getting any better for the banks.

"Citigroup Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co. and UBS AG may post further writedowns of $10 billion on their debt holdings after the two biggest bond insurers were stripped of their AAA rankings, according to Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Meredith Whitney."

Whitney correctly predicted that Citicorp would cut its dividend last October.

What does this mean? Pain from the credit crunch is still impacting financial institutions.