THE COMEBACK KIDS
Three years after their industry was reportedly in big trouble, commercial banks had their second-best quarter ever this year. Federal regulators say those institutions earned $11.2 billion in the quarter that ended this June, just shy of the record $11.5 billion they made in the third quarter of last year. Still, this blip may not be part of a long-term turnaround trend, says TIME assistant editor Bernard Baumohl, who covers the economy. "In the past two or three years, the Federal Reserve gave banks a great gift: it held interest rates at very low levels," he says. Lower interest meant that banks could get away with giving depositors lower rates of returns while keeping loan rates relatively high -- and pocketing the profits.
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RAY KELLY, New York City Police Commissioner, on the arrest of a New Jersey man in one of the nation's most baffling missing-children cases, the disappearance more than three decades ago of 6-year-old Etan Patz.
