US banks' stress tests

Business Daily looks at what the US banks' "stress tests" really mean. Can we say the worst is over, or were the tests too easy?

The American government has done its stress tests on the 19 biggest US banks to find out if they'll need more money to prop them up if the economic storms intensify.

The results - 10 of them need to add a total of $75bn to their books to weather the crisis safely.

Bank of America had the biggest shortfall according to the regulators - they say it needs another $34bn of capital to withstand a deep economic downturn, Wells Fargo needs more than $13bn, and Citigroup more than $5bn.

So is it good news or bad news? The BBC's economics correspondent Andrew Walker explains.

Is this the day when the worst is known, and we can say confidently that it is all uphill from here?

One of the key questions about the stress tests is whether they were tough enough, and if not, could have they underestimated how much the banks need?

Business Daily asked Irwin Collier, economics professor at Berlin's Free University, if the tests were too easy?