I couldn't be more irritated by the "stress tests".
I want to make sure I have this right. The federal government (all knowing) is going to assign a group of people to "project possible future economic stress" and determine if our banks are capitalized enough to deal with these imaginary conditions. Oh, and by the way, the government is retroactively going to apply these arbitrary outcomes to imaginary situations to how they will allow banks to repay the loans that the previous administration gave out.
This is the equivalent of getting a loan from a bank and then having the bank decide a year later that they are going to imagine what it would be like if you got fired from your job, then tell you that you need to have more money in your savings account in order to make more than your minimum payment to them.
If something like that were to happen to an individual from a bank it would be wrong and a clear indicator of corporate greed.
Well, while corporate greed is for money, government greed is for power. The stress tests are little more than a power grab by Geithner and Barry. To be fair, the banks were stupid for taking the TARP money in the first place. The money may have been offered by the Bush administration with benevolent intentions, but banks needed to have the foresight to see the socialist sharks circling the water. The gem of the industrial might of America is the auto industry and Barry controls two-thirds of that (thank God for Ford). Barry controls the gem of the insurance industry in AIG. With the stress tests, Barry is looking to take control of the gems of the financial industry, consumer banks. The hooks are fairly well in Citibank. The next big target is Bank of America.
Bank of America is the largest holder of home loans and credit cards. It is also the second largest holder of American deposit dollars and banks two-thirds of American households in some form or fashion. Now, it doesn't take a whiz kid to see how the stress test is a convenient way to take control of a whale like Bank of America. All you have to do is project the economy to worsen to a point that is so bad that the bank with the most exposure in home loans and credit cards would invariable come up short of capital. It does not matter if the bank is currently properly capitalized. You project the economy to get worse to a point that the bank needs to raise so much capital that you will do all but force them to have the government convert their preferred shares into common equity shares. Once you do that, you have control of arguably the most powerful bank in the world, and you definitely have control of the US economy.
If you are at all interested in social engineering (spreading the wealth) all you have to do now is take control of energy, education, and the media....
-The Banker
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