Phew, the banking crisis is over. Some 21 months after it began — a conservative $1 trillion poured down the drain in write-downs, losses and government bail-outs — the world's banks are back on track again.

Or so those clever people at Goldman Sachs would have you believe. The cheeky chaps, knowing their first quarter numbers were much better than Wall Street expected, sneaked them out a day early while most of the world was still on its Easter break.

What better way to return to work from the long weekend than on the back of excellent figures? And, if that weren't enough, the Goldman boys want to replace half the $10 billion bail-out money they got from the US government by selling $5 billion new shares to Wall Street.

There's the message; We don't need your money Mr Obama and, by the way, once we've paid it back we'll go back to paying ourselves real bonuses.

But take a second look at Goldman's numbers and not everything is quite so rosy. First up, virtually all the growth and rise in profits came from one division; fixed interest, commodities and trading. Those are the businesses that carry on churning trades whatever the real economy is doing.

Profits in investment banking, share trading and broking were all down on a year ago. Property losses soared. All this in a period when the death of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers should have allowed Goldman to win swathes of market share.

Then there's the little matter of December. A change of accounting year-end means that December which was in the first quarter for 2008 is not in 2009's. Towards the back of Goldman's press release it reveals that it actually made a pretax loss of $1.3 billion in that single month.

Only a cynic would suggest December was a kitchen sink job to ensure a good-looking first quarter.
But Sanford C Bernstein analyst Brad Hintz will not be the only person asking of Goldman's first quarter “Is this sustainable?”