Goldman Sachs is reporting a profit of 1.8 billion dollars for the first quarter of 2009. Much as it was with Wells Fargo, this beats the estimates by a quite substantial margin. This is good for two reasons. First, it shows the financial sector is making a come-back (which will improve “main street’s” ability to get a loan). And second, it feels like Goldman Sachs is starting to get pretty close to paying off their TARP loans. The company has recieved roughly 10 billion dollars from TARP.
But even though they made a profit of 1.8 billion dollars, the company’s principal investments lost $1.41 billion during the quarter, reflecting losses on real estate and a stake in a Chinese bank. So we’ll where this goes in the future, but it’s nice to get some good news.
