Because this quarter, in the midst of -- say it with me now -- the worst global recession in 70 years, profit at Amazon.com grew by 24 percent, to $177 million.

You read that right. Amazon's financials didn't stagnate, hold steady, or even increase slightly -- they flew off into the stratosphere. Sales also grew by a whopping 25 percent, ignoring currency fluctuations, according to the quarterly results announced today.

Although these particular numbers come as a shock, it's no surprise that e-commerce is benefiting from the downturn. Anemic consumer spending is choking off the weakest brick-and-mortar retailers. Circuit City, Linens 'n Things,  The Sharper Image, CompUSA and other major chains have joined the extinction list in the last year and a half, and online vendors like Amazon are wooing their former customers.

However, I do wonder how much of this stunning performance is due to a one-time Kindle Effect. Amazon released the second generation of its revolutionary e-reader in February to lots of critical praise and better-than-expected sales. Exactly how popular the Kindle is, however, remains a state secret. (For proof of Bezos's tsar-like reticence, witness Charlie Rose trying to charm the answer out of him. Skip to 34:15 for the pertinent bit, although the whole conversation is interesting.) If Amazon's strong profit growth this quarter was really due mostly to the Kindle, Bezos will have to channel Steve Jobs and iterate the hell out of his next-gen reading tablet in order to keep producing these kinds of results. 

The reason he'd prefer a seat of power in Beijing over Washington right now is that the task for China's leaders is to encourage consumer spending, telling their citizens, in effect, to "Enjoy a little more." Obama, of course, has the opposite task, and "is going to have to encourage Americans to save more." Selling swimming pools is a lot more fun than selling mutual funds.

Obviously Owens is exaggerating somewhat. I, for one, would probably take Obama's spot over Hu's. China has plenty of problems other than a too-high savings rate. Around a third of the country's 1.3 billion people live on less than the international poverty standard of $1.25 a day -- that amounts to hundreds of million of people. The environmental issues confronting the country, from algae-clogged lakes to brown skies, are staggering. China could lose hundreds of billions off its investment in U.S. Treasuries. Oh, and then there's the looming specter of democratic revolution. 

I was reading "Alice In Wonderland" to my daughter last night and came across these lines.

The White Queen: Can you do addition? What’s one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?

Alice: I don’t know. I lost count.

This put me in mind of the week's profit news from the major American banks--$3 billion in first quarter profit at Wells Fargo, $1.8 billion at Goldman, $2.1 billion at JPMorgan Chase, $4.25 billion at Bank of America. Looks good, till you really start adding. Let’s start with the most glaring problems: even as Bank of America was chalking up its profits, it was also warning that it faced growing credit losses, due to a decline in credit quality across all of its businesses (the Bank’s provisions for credit losses rose to $13.4 billion in the first quarter from $8.5 billion in the last quarter of 2008). "Make no doubt about it," said BOA chairman Kenneth Lewis, "Credit is bad, and it will eventually get worse before it stabilizes and improves."

At least he's up front about it. Goldman Sachs’ chairman Lloyd Blankfein certainly went to no great lengths to illuminate his firm's accounting sleights of hand, which I’ve already written about. Plenty of smart people believe that the improved profits of not just Goldman, but most of the big banks in question are in large part down to relaxed accounting rules. Early in April, after much lobbying by banks, who claimed that it was unfair to have to write down troubled assets when the market for them was so illiquid (uh, isn’t the fact that nobody wants to buy this stuff the point?), the Financial Accounting Standards Board alternated stringent mark-to-market rules, allowing banks to write some of those assets back up. Bottom line: there’s less clarity than ever about what the remaining junk on bank balance sheets is truly worth.

As you might imagine, Ken Lewis isn’t the only one expecting more write-downs. The IMF now expects that total losses in the global financial sector will reach $4.1 trillion dollars (with $2.7 trillion of that coming from the U.S.). Banks are expected to carry two thirds of those losses, with insurance companies, pension funds, hedge funds and others taking the rest.

Another recent report by McKinsey takes a similarly bleak view, noting that U.S. banks still hold over $2 trillion in toxic assets. Perhaps the most disturbing thing noted by the McKinsey authors is that most of the write-downs that have been taken by banks to date have been on assets that are clearly marked to market. McKinsey notes, however, that about 60 percent of the credit on the balance sheets of U.S. banks isn’t marked to market, but to those ever-nebulous financial models that got us into all the trouble to begin with. That murky portion of bank’s balance sheets is where most of the future losses are likely to occur.

If only, as the Duchess in Alice said, banks would "be what they seem to be." (Btw, for more on this topic, check out my Global Investor column in the coming edition of Newsweek International).

Reconsidering the Reconsideration of Aid: Two recent books have put aid to Africa on trial, arguing that it often does more harm than good. The idea has become vogue in the do-gooder zeitgeist, but Johannesburg-based Greg Mills says it's not the whole story.

Another One on the Up: Credit Suisse joined Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan in returning to profitability. The Swiss bank posted a quarterly profit of $1.7 billion after having lost over $5 billion last fall and shed some 5,100 jobs.

World's Biggest Frenemies: Former Secretary of Defense William Cohen editorializes that China and the U.S. form a de facto G-2 and have no choice but to get along. He lays out some points of commonality where they might get the ball rolling.

Polyannas vs. Cassandras: Lex wonders why the IMF insists on being such a sourpuss while politicians are doing their darndest to promote a recovery story.

Don't Tread on Me: Fed up with countries like China and Japan dumping cheap imports that hinder local industry, India is imposing an anti-dumping tax on stainless steel products. It will also hit South Africa, the EU, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and the US.