For Investors -- Banks See Record Year Due to Bailouts -- Not a Bakken Story

Link here.

Wall Street’s biggest banks, rebounding after a government bailout, are set to complete their best two years in investment banking and trading, buoyed by 2010 results likely to be the second-highest ever.


The five largest U.S. firms by investment-banking and trading revenue -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc.,  JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Morgan Stanley -- will likely have a better fourth quarter than the previous two periods, driven by equity underwriting and higher volume in stock and bond trading, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Even if this quarter only matches the third, the banks’ revenue will top that of any year except 2009. 

Silly me, thinking the banks were in trouble.  Any talk of a windfall profits tax?