Regulators have told Bank of America it needs $34 billion of capital, Citigroup needs $5 billion, Wells Fargo needed $15 billion, Morgan Stanley needs $1.5 billion and GMAC needs $11.5 billion, according to recent leaks. The reported capital shortfalls are much larger than analysts had expected, but investors aren't panicking, because the banks seem able to handle the shortfalls, and in any event any news is better than uncertainty. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said that no U.S. banks face the risk of insolvency, even though more than half of the 19 tested are presumed to be in need of capital, if we can believe the flood of leaks in the media lately. "None of those 19 banks are at risk for insolvency," he said, according to a transcript of a television interview. Geithner also said the pace of the U.S. economic decline was slowing, even as the economy still faced enormous uncertainty, but we all knew he'd say that, didn't we? He and Bernanke say it about twice a
day these days. It kind of covers all bases and leaves a backdoor open; if the economy improves, they can claim credit, and if it goes south, they can claim it's due to the "uncertainty."