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Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase Co. have emerged two bellwethers of the US finance sector in the post-bailout Wall Street, leading the surge of optimism with their strong profits in the Y 2009 Q-2. Six major US banks have reported their second-quarter profits in the past two weeks, vastly beating analyst predictions. The business of Goldman has little to do with common consumers, its quarterly earnings of more than US$3.4B posted were buoyed by record results in its trading and underwriting business. According to the quarterly report, the Wall Street giant generated a record US$6.8B in revenue from fixed income, currency and commodities trading during the quarter. Revenue from equity underwriting jumped to US$736M form UD$ 48M in the first quarter compared with US$616M last year. JP Morgan Chase, the largest US bank by market value, posted a US$2.72B earnings, and made its profits mainly from investment-banking services including bond and equity trading, and underwriting debt to help companies issue shares and bonds, not commercial loans and consumption credit.

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The largest expansion of US health care since the creation of Medicare in 1965 may emerge from legislation designed to reshape the medical industry and change how Americans receive and pay for care. Congress today begins crafting legislation that Democratic leaders plan to push through both chambers by their August recess. The measure may require all Americans to get medical insurance, force insurers to accept all patients and end the tax break for employer-paid health benefits. These changes may be hammered out with unprecedented speed at the urging of President Barack Obama who, four days ago, said “this is the moment.” Obama has made a health-care overhaul his top domestic priority, using his February budget proposal to call it a “moral” imperative to extend coverage to the country’s 46 million uninsured. Obama also tied the long-term fiscal soundness of the US to controlling medical costs. Health care consumes 18 percent of the US economy and may rise to 34% by 2040, the White House Council of Economic Advisers reported June 2. “I don’t think we’ve ever had anything this large in American history aimed to go this quickly that touches everybody’s lives,” said Robert J. Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a telephone interview. “They’re moving at a pace we’ve never seen before.” The US will spend more than US$2Tthis year on health care, the Health and Human Services department reported in February. Today, the Senate Health committee will begin debating a bill that includes “gateways” where consumers may compare coverage plans. The Senate Finance Committee later this week will unveil a bill that among its provisions will call for taxes on health benefits, and House committees will release a draft of their own comprehensive measure that would create a government-backed plan to compete with private insurance.

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The world’s leading finance ministers and central bank governors pledged last Saturday “to take whatever action is necessary until growth is restored,” suggesting that further action on monetary policy, fiscal stimulus and regulatory reform would be introduced in the months to come. Although the meeting ended without specific new commitments and no country or central bank would be forced to change any existing policy in light of the communique’, the participants representing 85% of the world’s economic output said they were pleased by the spirit of cooperation among the Group of 20 leading and emerging economies.

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