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Weekly Wrap: Bank profits and the housing market

Kai Ryssdal Apr 13, 2012

The news of Wall Street and beyond from Leigh Gallagher of Fortune magazine and Catherine Rampell of the New York Times.

On Wells Fargo and JPMorgan reporting strong profits:

Leigh Gallagher: Yeah it’s interesting. Keep in mind: These are sort of the two model students where the banks are concerned. They are the two that emerged probably the most unscathed from the financial crisis. But a number of things were interesting. It was on the good mortgage lending, and also trading and investment banking were also up, and those were two specific divisions that have faced real headwinds this year. So it was good results for both of those two, and we’ll see if it bodes well for the next week when the rest of the banks and other companies report.

On whether we’ve hit the housing bottom:

Catherine Rampell: Nobody knows, to be honest. And it also depends on what you mean by bottom — are we at the true valuation of housing? That’s also a very subjective thing. And in any case, probably you would expect the market to overshoot wherever that natural bottom might be.

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