American banks have never been more profitable.
Helped by the GOP’s corporate tax cuts, the sector made a record $60.2 billion in net income in the second quarter of 2018, up 25 percent from a year earlier, according to data released Thursday by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
The previous earnings record was $56 billion, set in the first quarter. If tax rates had stayed the same, bank profits in the April-June period would have risen by $5.6 billion (11.7 percent) instead of $12.1 billion, the FDIC report says.
In other words, the tax cuts boosted bank profits by a tidy $6.5 billion for the quarter.
