HSBC Points to More Pain in U.S.

LONDON -- Global banking giant HSBC Holdings PLC offered a downbeat outlook for the U.S. mortgage market, saying a slight improvement in the pace of souring loans isn't likely to last.

HSBC, which was among the first banks to signal the subprime-mortgage troubles that set off the financial crisis, said its U.S. consumer-finance operation had seen a slight slowdown in the deterioration of its mortgage loans and other secured loans in the first quarter -- a shift ****utives attributed in part to U.S. tax rebates and the bank's lending pullback in those areas.

The improvement, together with a jump in trading income, a strong performance in Asia and a $6.6 billion gain on the falling value of the bank's own debt, helped HSBC earn a pretax profit "well ahead" of the same period last year, the bank said in a trading update.

HSBC's top ****utives, though, said U.S. loan delinquencies often experience a seasonal dip in the first quarter and could pick up again toward year's end.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124203107131106167.html

Yea... even i read it. One of the largest global banks, HSBC, announced that their earnings for the first quarter were better that for the same period last year. Great news, huh? Not really, they released their data with a comment that basically said that if they had to report everything they reported to achieve those 2008 numbers, they would have ended up with a loss. But, because of changes in the way they report, chiefly the permission to exclude certain investments which are part of the so called “toxic assets” that have plagued banks for so long, they ended up with a good number. So essentially what the bank released yesterday was a watered down version of their earnings showing their good assets and excluding their liabilities. It is all in the numbers, and Forex online traders should pay attention to the banks whose ultimate fate will determine the fate of the overall economy.