Thanks to Wikicommons.
***UPDATE: Here are the Official Results***
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has been under a lot of stress lately. (We at USDemocrazy thinks it has something to do with fixing the tanking economy.) Now it seems he has been passing this stress onto others.
The US Treasury has required major banks to undergo “Stress Tests” (like waiting in line at the DMV) to see if they are financially sturdy enough (i.e. have enough money) to stand on their own two feet without government crutches.
The results are in… sort of…
The Feds will not be releasing the official results until later today. Luckily, there have been a number of leaks to the press.
Geithner has announced the results will be “reassuring” … although anythingother than total disaster might seem reassuring in this economic climate.
Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Regional Financial, Sun Trust, KeyCorp, Morgan Stanley, Fifth Third, P.N.C. and GMAC need more money. No surprises here.
Among those banks tough enough to survive are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, MetLife, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of New York Mellon, and American Express. (You can now open the champagne and charge it to your AmEx card.)
What happens to those stressed out banks? Does the government issue Valium?
Well, it seems the banks get one month to put a plan together for raising cash.
Once the banks get their stress report cards, the pundit class will weigh in with their interpretation of the grades. The NY Times has a great collection of experts giving their two cents worth. Arianna Huffington is as vocal as ever with her opinion,
“The fact that the stress test results to be released on Thursday are unlikely to show the full extent of the sickness of our financial system is one more symptom that Obama’s economic team needs to be put in quarantine…”
We’ll see down the road how accurate these tests were. So what do y’all think? Are you and the banks stressed enough?
“..The US Treasury has required major banks to undergo “Stress Tests” to see if they are financially sturdy enough (i.e. have enough money) to stand on their own two feet without government crutches…”
They ‘needed’ your money because they are insolvent. They should have failed like any other business that can’t turn a profit, no government ‘crutches’ needed. You were F’n robbed is what happened. You don’t need Turbo Tax Timmy to tell you that. The banks who are the primary financiers of elections of both R’s & D’s called in their favors so they didn’t end up collapsing. The central bank (which needs to be abolished) is to blame for this seeing as they supplied the loose credit policy that stems the mal-investment in the first place.
All banks are not insolvent, small banks and credit unions that didn’t engage in poor practices are still around. You can still get credit, not that any more of the people of America need it since they are already loaded with too much debt. People need to stop living beyond their means and save their money and spend it wisely, not blow on a house they cannot afford.
GM and Chrysler should have gone under long ago. They are way behind Europe and Japan as far as technology goes. Once Detroit shuts down watch out for things to get worse. You can thank government ‘regulation’ from keeping competition form entering the market and allowing insolvent businesses to still exist, they are a waste of resources.
You want real regulations, outlaw fractional reserce banking, get rid of the central bank, get rid of all federal regulations on business so more competition can enter the market place, among a plethora of other regulations that act to secure monopolies for illigitimate businesses and not prevent them.
Get rid of property and income taxes as well so people can save more money and get out of debt.