Daily News Roundup

Posted by vriz on 05/06/2009

When the results of the banking industry “stress tests” are released tomorrow, it will be almost completely anticlimactic. The information about the results has been leaked all week. Here’s what we know already: The Bank of America needs another “roughly” $35 billion in capital. Wells Fargo “allegedly” needs $15 billion. And Citigroup Inc “might” be undercapitalized by about $10 billion. It has also been leaked that at least 10 banks out of 19 largest will need additional capital. Perhaps counter intuitively, the markets did not react negatively to the news overall, and even the banking stocks themselves did not suffer. It appears that the certainty from placing a figure on the health of the banks has calmed the traders down. The FDIC Chairwoman, Sheila Bair, suggested in her testimony before the Senate Banking Committee yesterday that big banks of the likes of Citi and the Bank of America, should be subject to government receivership, just like smaller banking institutions. Ms. Bair strongly suggested that we need to move away from relying on a handful of “too big to fail” financial institutions. She advocated for a system where institutions will be allowed to fail without a risk to the whole system. What happens when your house is built with toxic Chinese drywall? You can’t breathe, you can’t talk, and your house becomes worthless even if you have just bought it 18 months ago for $1.2 million.

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