Banks make progress in throwing off TARP
Last week, Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley used enthusiasm over the bank stress tests to sell billions of dollars worth of stock. This morning, Bloomberg reports, four other banks plan to do the same thing. US Bancorp, Capital One, KeyCorp and BB&T plan to sell a total of about $6.3 billion in shares.
US Bancorp and BB&T have said they want to pay back their government TARP money as soon as possible. Those two banks, along with Capital One, got a passing grade on last week’s stress test, with the government saying they have enough equity capital to withstand a severe recession. KeyCorp is required to raise $1.8 billion by the end of the year.
It’s good news that the capital markets are now open to these banks. As I wrote in Sunday’s column,
With their new capital in hand and the regulators off their backs, the big banks may finally be in a mood to lend.
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David Nicklaus has covered St. Louis business for more than 25 years. His column appears three days a week on the Post-Dispatch business page. 
David,
I don’t know that the regulators will (or should) get off of the banks that still have billions in debt guaranteed at cut-rate prices by the FDIC. Just wondering what your thoughts are on that.
It’s not the regulators as much as it is the politicos in Congress. Want to see a real live example of a business run by Congress….U.S. Postal Service…a monopoly run by Congress and is a mess. Congress is who needs to be shaken from its hold on banking and industry.
As far as the regulators, they are arriving late on the scene as usual. Did the same thing in the late 80’s. Arrive on the battle field in time to shoot the wounded. What they need are some stones to enforce the rules they now have…not a bunch of new ones. If they had the stones to call unsound banking practices when they saw them earlier in the game, we would not have dug such a deep hole. But they don’t. They can’t take the heat from the other side of the desk and retreat to their dens, BECAUSE they can’t get the support from their bosses (Congress) at that stage. It takes real stones to lean into the wind for no real compensation for the pain………so………retreat. Come back to clean the battlefield and shoot the wounded at battles end. That’s what they do.