Friday, April 24, 2009

The Stress Test

So, results of the "stress test" for banks—to see how viable they would remain under favorable and not-so-favorable economic forecasts—were supposed to be in today, and most of what was revealed is we are going to have to wait until later to hear anything of substance about the stress test.

In the better scenario, and economic turnaround is coming soon, and unemployment and the credit contraction won't get worse than it currently is. In the worse condition, present economic factors particularly real estate, decline moderately through this year and then level off in 2010. There is some acknowledgment that things could go still worse than that.

If the banks were able to pull some accounting rabbit out of the hat, I'm sure we would have heard the results today.

2 comments:

East.Bay.Miser said...

Geithner, as Member and Overseer, Forged Ties to Finance Club

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/business/27geithner.html

SF Mechanist said...

Our choices (1) Banks go bankrupt from all the over-leveraged bad debt, (2) taxpayers pay trillions to buy off that bad debt, or (3) the dollar is hyperinflated such that all debts are erased or greatly decreased.

I pick door #1, #3 I don't think is in the interest of those running the show so won't happen, and so #2 is the only alternative to door #1, which is ultimately going to be mowed over by it's unpopularity but that doesn't mean they aren't going give it a whirl.