By fitsnews – October 16, 2009
Bank of “America,” the recipient of over $45 billion worth of taxpayer-funded bailout money, posted a whopping $2.2 billion loss for the third quarter.
The bad news came after two successive quarters of bailout-boosted returns, and prompted a sell-off on Wall Street after a week of rallying.
Worse still, Bank of America’s losses are far from fully realized, even though the firm’s outgoing CEO Ken Lewis claims that they “may” have now peaked. Or may be “close” to peaking.
Yikes.
Bank of America currently has $21 billion in “heavily delinquent consumer loans” and $12.9 billion in “nonperforming commercial loans.”
That makes it especially vulnerable to the nation’s escalating unemployment rate, which bank officials are hoping will peak at 10%.
