The Rebrew Intelligencer
Every item of news herein is true. The opinions, the advertisements and the Editor are inventions.
The Great Banks Open Their Ledgers.
Goldman, Sachs & Co. Report a Harvest of Uncommon Abundance.
The House of Morgan Earns Fifteen Billions of Dollars in Three Months and Is Scolded for Falling Short. Citigroup Prospers, and Its Shares Decline Regardless.
NEW YORK, Oct. 13. The four great banking houses of New York laid their accounts before the public on Tuesday, as the custom of the quarter requires, and the figures were of a size that the Editor, who keeps his own savings in a coffee tin, was obliged to read twice.
The firm of Goldman, Sachs & Co. reported net earnings of $5.29 billion for the three months ended in September, or $17.01 upon each share. The gentlemen of the Street, whose profession it is to guess these things in advance, had guessed $13.50, and were wrong by a margin that would embarrass a weather prophet. Profits rose 29 per cent from the same season a year ago, and revenues 23 per cent, to $18.68 billion. The firm's dealers in stocks alone brought in $6.44 billion, an increase of 72 per cent, which suggests that a great deal of buying and selling was done by persons who will not tell us why.
The house of J. P. Morgan, which now goes by the name of JPMorgan Chase, earned $15.3 billion, or $5.57 upon each share, against $14.4 billion in the same quarter of last year. Its revenues rose 8 per cent, to $50.9 billion. These are sums sufficient to purchase a moderate European principality with change left over for the railway. Wall Street had nonetheless expected $5.93 a share, and the result was reported in several quarters as a miss, losses on the bank's holdings of securities being blamed for the shortfall. In the Editor's experience a man is never so severely criticised as when he earns fifteen billions and was expected to earn sixteen.
Wells Fargo, a name that once meant a stagecoach and a strongbox, reported net income of $6.0 billion, or $1.87 a share, upon revenues of $21.9 billion, which fell short of what the analysts had looked for. At both Wells Fargo and the Morgan bank, the revenue from home mortgages declined after a strong second quarter.
Citigroup reported that its profits had risen some 40 per cent from a year before, to about $5.2 billion, and that its adjusted earnings came to $2.85 a share against the $2.65 that had been expected. Its shares fell on the news. This newspaper confesses that it cannot account for why a bank that earns more than was expected should be worth less for it, and suspects that no one else can either.
The bankers struck a cautious note all the same, warning that rising rates of interest and what is now called sticky inflation may yet bite. The Editor has known sticky inflation personally since the price of molasses doubled in his boyhood, and he extends his sympathy.
The general market took all of this calmly. The Standard and Poor's average of five hundred stocks closed within a few points of where it began, the Dow Jones average of thirty industrials gave up some 180 points, and the whole business of the day was concluded, as it always is, in time for supper.
Telegraphic Dispatches
Russian Missiles Strike a Kyiv Power Station.
A Dwelling Is Also Hit. President Zelensky Says No Warning Came From Abroad.
KYIV, Oct. 13. Russian ballistic missiles struck the Darnytsia heat and power station in Kyiv, known as CHP-4, on Monday evening, and a residential building was hit in the same attack. The mayor of the city, Vitali Klitschko, reported one person killed and thirteen injured, four of them seriously. These figures were given on the night of the attack and may yet change.
President Zelensky said that Ukraine had received no advance warning of the launches from its partners abroad, and that the strike came two days after an arrangement, backed by the United States, to halt attacks upon energy works. Ukraine had supported that arrangement, he said, and Russia was not abiding by it. He added that Ukrainian intelligence expected further launches.
Our London Letter.
Mr. Burnham Would Reopen the Bargain With Europe, and Names Russia as a Meddler in the Brexit Vote.
LONDON, Oct. 12. The Prime Minister, Mr. Andy Burnham, who succeeded Sir Keir Starmer in July, told the House of Commons on Monday that parts of the trade agreement struck with Europe after Britain's departure from the Union will be renegotiated. He intends to attend a summit at Brussels in November, where the paperwork of food exports, the trading of emissions and cooperation upon immigration are to be discussed.
Mr. Burnham also said it was clear that Russia interfered in the Brexit vote of 2016, which Al Jazeera reports is the first time a British Prime Minister has publicly acknowledged the interference. Our London correspondent, who is an invention, observes that renegotiating a treaty is like refolding a map, and wishes the Prime Minister luck.
The Nobel Prize for Economy.
Two Professors Honoured for Explaining the Booms and the Busts.
STOCKHOLM, Oct. 12. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Monday that the prize in economic sciences, the last of this year's Nobel honours, goes to Professor Robert E. Hall of Stanford University and Professor Michael Woodford of Columbia University.
The two are honoured for building their models of the whole economy, its booms and its slumps, upon the behaviour of individual households and firms, rather than upon statistical links between such quantities as prices, production and consumption. The Academy says the models resting on their work are now used by central banks and governments around the world. The Editor's own model of the economy, which holds that every panic is caused by the railroad interest, was once again passed over.
Sporting Intelligence.
The Gamecocks Invade the Swamp and Return Victorious.
GAINESVILLE, FLA., Oct. 10. The football eleven of the University of South Carolina defeated the University of Florida, ranked sixteenth in the land, by a score of 38 to 19 on Saturday. Mr. LaNorris Sellers, who directs the Carolina attack, accounted for five touchdowns, four of them by the forward pass, and completed 23 of 35 throws for 279 yards. The contest was halted for a lengthy delay on account of lightning, after which the visitors took command and kept it.
The victory ends a run of eight straight defeats for the Gamecocks in the Southeastern Conference and is their first at Gainesville since 2014. They rest this week and receive Tennessee at Columbia on the 24th. Clemson receives Charleston Southern on Saturday.
In the base ball championship of the American League, Cleveland took the first game of its series from Tampa Bay, at Tampa. In the National League, the Milwaukee club has beaten the Los Angeles Dodgers in the second game of theirs.
Money and Commerce
The Exchange.
A Dull Day, Save for the Makers of Memory.
Stocks closed a shade lower on Tuesday. The Dow Jones average of thirty industrials fell 180.45 points, or 0.35 per cent, to 51,670.10. The Standard and Poor's 500 ended at about 7,805, nearly unchanged and within reach of the record it set last week. The Nasdaq composite, where the mechanical and electrical concerns are traded, gave up 41.52 points to close at 27,204.38.
The makers of memory chips, which are the small parts in which the calculating machines keep what they know, were sold on reports that a Chinese rival, CXMT, has made advances with a chip of its own. The Editor is informed that this paper is itself composed by such a machine, and he has asked it whether it is worried. It declined to comment.
The Editor's Desk
On the Nobel Prize, and the Railroad.
We congratulate Professors Hall and Woodford, who have spent their lives explaining why the economy swells and then shrinks, and who have been rewarded for it by a committee of Swedes. It is a fine thing to explain a panic. It is a finer thing to be paid for it.
We note, however, that the professors have been honoured without any reference to the railroad. This newspaper has maintained for some years that every bubble, every bust and most bad weather can be traced to the railroad interest, and we see no reason to abandon the position merely because most of the railroads have closed. The professors build their models upon the behaviour of households and firms. We build ours upon the behaviour of a man named Fenwick, who in 1998 sold our late father a share in a branch line to nowhere in particular. Our model has the merit of having been proven, at considerable expense.
Meanwhile the great banks have reported profits in the billions, and the Evening Clarion, across the street, has printed the figures without a single word of alarm. We do not trust a newspaper that is calm about money. Neither should you.
Letters to the Editor
The Machine at the Grocer's.
SIR: On Saturday I went to the grocer for a pound of coffee and was directed to a machine, which required me to weigh, price and bag my own goods and then accused me, in a loud voice and before my neighbours, of an unexpected item in the bagging area. The item was my hat. I have shopped at that establishment for eleven years and have never before been called a thief by furniture. I ask whether the grocer intends to pay me the wages of a clerk, since I did the clerk's work.
A RATEPAYER, Augusta Road.
An Alarming Diagnosis.
SIR: My nephew informs me that a short picture he made of his dog has gone viral. I sent at once for the doctor, who examined the boy, the dog and the telephone and found nothing wrong with any of them except the boy's posture. Can you tell me whether the condition is catching, and whether I ought to burn the telephone?
[The condition is catching. Burn nothing. ED.]
AN ANXIOUS AUNT, Pendleton Street.
Society and Amusements
At the Picture Houses.
The moving pictures kept their hold upon the public over the week end. First in the receipts was Other Mommy, a horror from the Universal and Blumhouse companies with Miss Jessica Chastain, which opened to nearly $28 million. Second was Verity, with about $12 million. The Editor took his wife to neither, on the grounds that he has a mother of his own and requires no other.
Local Miscellany
The Weather.
Our barometer was knocked from the wall on Monday by the Editor's nephew, Thaddeus, who was demonstrating a dance he had learned from his telephone, and no forecast could be obtained from a reliable authority before this number went to press. Readers are advised to look out of the window, which is how the weather was forecast for most of human history.
Shipping Intelligence.
The Editor's parcel, a replacement barometer, departed a warehouse in the county of Spartanburg on Tuesday and has since been reported out for delivery, in transit and, at four o'clock in the morning, arriving early. It has not arrived. Its present position is unknown, and the Editor has stationed Thaddeus at the front window.
A Notice.
The Editor is not acquainted with any gentleman of the Evening Clarion, does not read that paper, and was not aware until this morning that it printed the bank figures without a word of alarm, as stated in the column opposite.
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