Are You Wondering Just How Corrupt the Stress Tests Were

Well, wonder no more. Treasury negotiated the results of the tests with the banks.

Of course if you were a student, and attempted to browbeat your teacher into improving your grade, they would just laugh in your face or demand a bribe, but if you are Ben Bernanke and Timothy "Eddie Haskell" Geithner, they can do it for you for free, or as Joe Btfsplk wrote in the comments section of this story, "Maybe next time, they could give the banksters multiple choice tests," because they certainly failed the true-false test:

The Federal Reserve significantly scaled back the size of the capital hole facing some of the nation's biggest banks shortly before concluding its stress tests, following two weeks of intense bargaining.

Bargaining?

This is supposed to be a test administered by the Treasury and Federal Reserve, not a negotiation.

The banks are in hock to the Treasury and FDIC for hundreds of billions of dollars, and to the Federal Reserve for Trillions, and they negotiated with the banks?

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

In addition, according to bank and government officials, the Fed used a different measurement of bank-capital levels than analysts and investors had been expecting, resulting in much smaller capital deficits.

Again, this is not grading on a curve, this is is everyone getting a gold star.

Yes, Wells threatened a lawsuit, but that was an empty threat, because of the response of the market to their suing the FDIC, Treasury, and Federal reserve would have turned their shares into penny stocks.