The New York Times notes that without extraordinary one-time gains, both Bank of America and Citi would have posted some big losses. At Bank of America, the big item was a huge gain from the sale of its stake in China Construction Bank and the sale of the company's merchant processing business. At Citigroup, it was a big gain related to its wealth management joint venture with Morgan Stanley.

The esteemed Times columnist Floyd Norris took Bank of America to task in his live blog of the twin earnings conference calls. "So pretax, without the two extraordinary items, the bank lost $6.7 billion. That is not, however, a number the bank chooses to print." Of course you can't blame a bank for wanting to spin things its way. Norris also notes that fees seemed to account for more of the revenue. 

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