October 14, 2009

A year after the government applied a tourniquet to the banking industry, the bleeding has slowed -- but it hasn't stopped.The six biggest U.S. banks will tell investors in coming weeks how they did in the third quarter. Analysts expect four of the six to post profits, and the best-run banks -- Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) -- are likely to more than double last year's bottom line.

But Wall Street expects profits at both Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500) and Morgan Stanley (MS, Fortune 500) to fall from a year ago. And the biggest beneficiaries of Washington's too-big-to-fail mindset, Citi (C, Fortune 500) and Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), may lose money.Bank analysts say a severe economic downturn preceded by a long credit boom means stubbornly high losses on home loans.