Friday, October 22, 2010

Corporate Cash Really Isn't

Mish has an interesting post which contrasts "corporate cash" with corporate debt. The upshot is the cash is concentrated in just four big financials (Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America), and overall in about 50 companies. But corporates with cash are also in debt up to their eyeballs, so much so that the debt outweighs the cash by a TARP-size bailout amount:

As you can see, the total cash (in green) for the top 50 companies is $3.71 trillion, which sure sounds like a hell of a lot of cash, and it would be were it not for the debt (in red) totaling $4.45 trillion.

Read it all and see the graphic here.