Word: stressful
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...This tension over pricing helps explain the leaked stories on Wednesday announcing that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will make public the results of the banks' "stress tests" next month. The tests started out in March as a gauge of banks' ability to handle a worst-case economic downturn; now they've become a weapon for Obama and Geithner to force the banks to clean up their acts, officials say. "It gives [Obama and Geithner] leverage to make large institutions do things they otherwise wouldn't do," says a senior government official involved in the tests...
...though, the banks may have no choice. Since the 1930s, regulators have been able to force banks to shore up their balance sheets by selling assets, even at prices lower than the bankers would like. The stress tests give the supervisors the ammunition they need to do that. "With the results of the stress tests in hand, it just gives you more leverage," says the senior government official involved in the tests...
...Geithner may not be completely out of the woods even if they do force banks to sell their toxic assets. Some banks may be so deeply in debt that even the proceeds from the sales won't be enough to fill their capital needs. In that case, the stress tests may prove useful in another way. Geithner has only about $35 billion of TARP money left to plug the remaining holes for the 19 largest banks. After that, he has to go back to Congress for more money - at which point he'll need the stress tests to convince bailout...
...clear whether the government looked closely at commercial mortgage loans when it did its "stress tests" on banks. It is also not clear what assumptions the government used for the default rates of this paper. The $27 billion in debt that General Growth holds seems like a great deal of money. But, looking at all of the commercial real estate holdings across the country, particularly those with mortgages taken out between 2003 and 2007, and the problem is deeper than most people can imagine...
...mine for their work. From 1993 to 2001 and then again from 2003 to 2006, the CDC conducted two nationwide surveys of a total of 2.4 million people in more than 3,100 counties across all 50 states. Respondents were asked to think about their general mental state, including "stress, depression and problems with emotion," and then asked how many days in the past month their mental health was generally not good...