Its comforting to see a string of better bank financial results in recent days. Citiigroup reported today their first quarterly profit in six quarters, and as a result, a little bit more confidence has come back into the stockmarkets around the world. In London, the FTSE 100 has remained above 4000 for a few days, and dare i say it, we may have seen the bottom of this extended bear market.
I said in my blog a few weeks ago that this recession will not come to an end until people have a banking system that doesn’t give them the jitters. You can still be angry with our financial men and women (bloody angry in fact), that’s one thing. But to have no confidence in them is another thing entirely.
We’ll wait to see what’s in the budget next week, but if the government comes to the aid of companies that have been constrained by the tightening up of the credit insurance market, the picture will be even rosier . There’s still the lagging features of a recession yet to come (more redundancies, more liquidations etc), but the sight of banks returning to profitability has to be welcomed by all.