The Big Banks report blowout earnings, but is there trouble beneath the hood? Plus, coin

bases $100 billion debut on the financial stage. For all this and more, I'm joined by Chris

Whalen of Whalen Global Advisors. Chris, welcome to the Daily Briefing. How are you doing?

My pleasure. How are you? All good here in Westchester County.

I'm doing really well, Chris, and I'm so glad that you joined us because you are an expert

on the banks and you really could not have picked a better day to come because we had a huge

release of earnings today from Goldman Sachs, Dapy Morgan, as well as Wells Fargo. And the headline

news, Chris, is that it was an absolute blowout. Your net income was much, much higher than analysts

were expecting. Do you agree with that narrative? No, I mean, the narrative is about being constructive.

If you're not constructive, they don't put you on TV, which is why I haven't been on a certain

network in a while. The banks are basically taking income from last year that they had put aside

for COVID for possible losses and they're reporting it as income now. So that's good. The numbers

are great. And under gap accounting, this is right. But the thing is, if you take JP Morgan and you

take the reserve release out, their revenues were down year over year. You know, their earnings

would have been down year over year. And nobody on Wall Street really gets past the first paragraph

and the press release. So they don't bother with this stuff. The other key thing is that banks are

continuing to see their assets run off. In other words, they're not originating new loans fast

enough to keep up with the loans that are either being redeemed or prepaid early. A lot of early

prepayments, especially in business loans, that kills banks. Because when they have to work harder to

replace a loan, it got paid off early, that just adds to their burden. It's so competitive now

with all the big banks today to get quality assets. So a lot of them will just fold their hands and

sit back. And that's why generally lending is falling. So Chris, a year ago, the problem seemed to

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