Throughout the pandemic, the deleveraging of consumers and corporate has been the dominating theme in the U.S. banking sector. They put more into deposits but took much fewer loans, leading to declining revenue growth for the banking sector.

However, the theme started to change in the third quarter as all major U.S. banks reported robust earnings. After a couple of quarters of negative growth, the banks' loan volume grew across the board, an excellent sign for the economy's health. Just as Jim Cramer said on the Mad Money, "the U.S. economy is in a much better place than people expected. And economic trouble comes when people are in debt, not when they are flushed with cash."

• "We also saw another quarter of solid loan growth. The good news is that the nature of this growth has broadened in the third quarter.Every loan category has seen improvement." -- Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America 

• "We see a number of indicators to suggest it (loan) has stabilized and may be poised to begin more robust growth across the company." -- Jeremy Barnum, CFO of JP Morgan

• "And for the first time, since the first quarter of 2020, we grew both loans and deposits in the third quarter. We continue to see that our customers have significant liquidity and consumers are continuing to spend." -- Charles Scharf, CEO of Wells Fargo

Consumer Loan QoQ Growth (%)

Close

Consumer Loan QoQ Growth (%)

Corporate Loan QoQ Growth(%)

Close

Corporate Loan QoQ Growth(%)

The comments from CEOs of major banks on the state of the U.S. economy are also quite interesting.

• "There's not one company I know who's not working aggressively to fix the supply chain issues. Sales are still up; credit card debit card spends still up because it was in great shape. And capitalism works. I doubt we'll be talking about supply chain stuff in a year." -- Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan

• "Checking customer that has made $2,000 or $3,000 in balances with us, either sitting with 3 to 4 times -- 3 times what they had before the crisis." -- Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America

• "We expect deposit growth to continue, although it's going to be likely at a slower rate than what was experienced so far this year. Taping is still Q.E., so deposits are really not likely to decline until many quarters to look back at historical data. Because as the economy expands, we could see growth in deposits even though money supply is coming down." -- Paul Donofrio, CFO of Bank of America