The mysteries of high finance

I was going to write a piece about the banks but I am far from sure that I sufficiently understand the fancy footwork which is going on. Here, for example, is the BBC's Mr Peston on Northern Rock:

The government is to inject up to £3bn of new equity capital into Northern Rock.
Or to put it another way, the nationalised bank is having a mega rights issue that taps its one shareholder.
The way to see it is as a tweaking by the government of its promise that all those taxpayer loans would be repaid.
It's now saying, in essence, that the final £3bn - plus £400m of preference shares that will also be converted into ordinary capital - will only be repaid if the bank is eventually sold and denationalised at a profit.

Clear? Now let's move on to Mr Linklater of The Times on RBS (here):

On the surface, the figures look terrible - a £5billion profit last year has become a loss of more than £1billion, if the figures analysts are quoted turn out to be correct. The anger felt by shareholders at the bank's £5.9million writedown earlier this year has developed into a wider concern by the public, which will see the loss as symptomatic of a decline in confidence in a hitherto impregnable financial institution.
Figures that look stark in a headline, however, are not necessarily the best indicators of a bank's underlying position. What is striking about the reaction within Scotland to the predicted results is how relatively sanguine it is. Most analysts make the point that the bank is still profitable, that the £1billion-plus figure analysts predict does not represent an actual loss, more a potential one, and that, against the background of the global credit crunch, it might in fact turn out to be a pretty good result.

A loss of £1 billion could be 'a pretty good result'? What would be a bad result?

My head hurts ...