Another shell game by bankers?

From the Wall Street Journal

• Banks Turn Reserves to Profit - 

  The biggest U.S. banks virtually doubled their collective earnings in the third quarter just by injecting $8.1 billion into net income from funds they had set aside to cover loan losses.

 

Sure, they got into trouble because they had too few reserves. So the government injected money into banks so they would have more reserves. (along with loaning banks money at practically zero interest rates). So now the reserves have turned into profits.

Meanwhile, banks have neglected basic hygiene (e.g. preparing foreclosure information according to current law) and have generally been reluctant to restructure mortgages.

And, although banks were "too big to fail" when they threatened to fail in the late G. W. Bush administration, they are even bigger now after the Obama "reforms".

Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex, but perhaps can be forgiven for not warning about the Wall Street / banking / "regulator" complex. He was a military guy after all, not a finance guy.