The Banking Monkeys Are Being Put Back In Their Cages

After a bout of the monkeys running the zoo, they are now being rounded back up and locked in their cages again. In the last two weeks UBS sold its stake in a Chinese bank and today Bank of America follows. Unfortunately, these foolish stakes could have been sold at the height of the Chinese stock market bubble to make some sense of their insanity but instead both banks rode their Chinese investments through one of the largest crashes the world has ever seen. That's about par for the course with other ridiculous decisions made by banking executives. Ironically, banks extorted money out of their depositors with exorbitant fees and credit rates then turned around and used our money to make very foolish bets. All while our government took a nap on consumer protection laws. Wasn't it just a few months ago that Bank of America was telling us how they were going to take advantage of this cycle to make acquisitions? (We wrote that there were a lot of bad bets being made in emerging markets while companies were in the process of making them.)

Ironically, the banksters still have their jobs, taxpayer bailouts and lofty salaries while the innocent people suffer for the bankster's mad behavior.

As banks continue to downsize, their ability to support the economy at its prior level is severely hampered. And, so too are the associated bank earnings estimates. More economic pain lies ahead.