Yes, but not nearly as much as the report $4.5 billion would led you to believe.  Here are their one-time earnings used to make that number:

• $1.9 billion pretax gain on the sale of shares in China Construction Bank
• $2.2 billion from an adjustment to the value of structured notes at Merrill

Things not mentioned in the headlines:

• Credit card division lost $1.8 billion
• Mortgage division lost $500 million
• $6.4 billion added to reserves to cover future losses

Who’s next up in this game?   From this morning’s performance in the stock market, investors aren’t happy playing…

According to the headline of this New York Times article, they did.

But on closer inspection, their $1.6 billion profit came from a 1-time charge of $2.7 billion.   So in reality, the company actually had $1.1 billion in less cash (i.e., money out the door) than they had at the start of the quarter.

It’s these types of games that need to stop.

I finally decided to cancel my American Express Delta SkyMiles yesterday. After evaluating my current spending and travel plans, I didn’t feel it make sense to continue to pay $95 annually for the privilege of using the card.

One of things that surprised me was the customer service rep made no effort to eliminate the fee for a year, just trying to talk me into keeping the card. Even that effort wasn’t that strong …