Apa jadinya kalau stress test di US dinyatakan tidak valid oleh kongress dan 
harus diulang. Sepertinya ada tarik menarik kepentingan karena beberapa bank 
sudah dinyatakan OK hari ini untuk membayar TARP. Jika stress test benar harus 
diulang dan ini benar2 terjadi ??.....

Investigators warn bank stress tests not enough

Congressionally appointed panel overseeing bailout warns that bank stress tests 
not enough 

Anne Flaherty, Associated Press Writer

On Tuesday June 9, 2009, 11:29 am EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A government test of whether 19 major banks could survive a 
further downturn in the economy may have relied on too rosy a scenario and 
should be repeated, independent investigators say.

In a report released Tuesday, the Congressional Oversight Panel for the 
government's $700 billion financial rescue effort found that the Federal 
Reserve used a "conservative and reasonable" approach to assessing the health 
of the nation's biggest banks.

But, the panel added, the Fed's worst-case scenario does not go far enough. For 
example, the "stress tests" conducted by the Fed were based on the 2009 
unemployment rate average of 8.9 percent. Unemployment in May climbed to 9.4 
percent.

"While no one should gainsay the potentially positive results of the tests, it 
would be equally unwise to think that those results reflect a diagnosis of all 
of the potential weaknesses or create a necessarily sufficient buffer against 
future reverses for the banking system," the panel wrote.

Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard University law professor who heads the panel, 
told lawmakers on Tuesday that the Fed should release more details about how it 
conducted the tests.

"Without this information, it is not possible for anyone to replicate the tests 
to determine how robust they are or to vary the assumptions to see whether 
different projections might yield very different results," Warren told the 
Joint Economic Committee.

Last month, the Fed found that 10 of the 19 banks needed additional capital. 
Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo are among the banks told to boost 
capital by a total of $75 billion to cover potential losses.

Fed officials said Monday that plans submitted by those banks, if implemented, 
would be enough to help them survive a deeper recession.

The Congressional Oversight Panel says that additional capital held by the 
banks should not be interpreted as an end to the financial crisis.

The panel recommended that the Fed repeat stress testing so long as banks 
continue to hold large amounts of bad debt on their books. The panel also 
suggests that banks be required to run their own internal stress tests and 
share those results with federal regulators.

Last fall, the Treasury Department created the $700 billion Troubled Asset 
Relief Program to encourage banks to start lending again amid the darkest days 
of the financial crisis.

Some of the banks that received the aid now want to start paying it back. On 
Tuesday, the Treasury Department announced that it had approved 10 banks to 
repay $68 billion.

Congressional Republicans this week pressed the administration to use the money 
to pay down the national debt, instead of holding on to it for future potential 
bailouts.

Republican Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas introduced legislation that calls for 
shutting down TARP payments by the end of the year.

"TARP is increasingly not being a vehicle for economic stability and taxpayer 
protection, but is evolving into a $700 billion revolving slush fund that the 
administration can use to advance economic, social and political agenda items 
far and apart from what TARP was ever designed to do," Hensarling told 
reporters.

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