J.P Morgan just released their Quarterly profits (that's 3 months folks) and they've managed to shatter the old record. Now it should be stated that J.P is the 2nd largest US bank so one can only guess at the profits of their largest. Anyways, they "earned" $3.3 Billion in profits for the quarter. Just say that out loud to yourself. $3.3 BILLION.
That's
$3,300,000,000.00 (nine zeros)
3,300 x New Millionaires
$10.00 from every man, woman & child in the USA (or $40 per US Citizen/year)
Another way of looking at this (literally is....)
- $100 is something you could spend on you and your loved one for dinner & a movie
- $10,000 (ten thousand dollars) A stack of $100 bills (1000 of them) would fit snugly in your pocket and let you have one very nice vacation in a 5 star resort
- $1,000,000 (million dollars) Now we're getting into lottery money. This is where you buy a house, pay off the bills, send the kids to college
- $100,000,000 (hundred million) This is uber-rich kind of money. At this level you're Hollywood rich. Tom Cruise, Arnold, Mike Jordan, Mike Jackson..hell, even Tiger have a few of these to their names and we've all seen the photos of their lifestyles
- $1,000,000,000 (billion dollars) Congratulations, you've just made it onto FORBES Billionaire's list. Now to put this into perspective, Bill Gates has about 50 times this. At this level, you are James Bond super villain rich. You have a chateau in the south of France, your own tropical island, a mega yacht or two, private planes and if you really wanted to, you could own a sky scraper or two in Manhattan.
Multiply this x 3 and that's what J.P Morgan made as PROFIT in 3 months. That means they've paid the bills and salaries and this is the gravy...For 3 months of "work". Don't worry though, they'll do it again in another 3 months and so will their competitors. They're just one bank.
Now how did they make this much ? Well, they gouged you, the depositor. They used your money to invest and this is the profit they made from your money while at the same time only giving you %0.25 in return. They made this by charging you %30 on your credit cards. They made this by exploiting every loophole in the tax system.
So next time you're standing in line at the supermarket with a handfull of clipped coupons from the newspaper so you can save $0.50 on Tuna fish, remember, that the 50 cent fee charged on your debit card is helping to rake up that $3.3 Billion in quarterly profit.
