>>The Obama administration has been saying any more bailouts will come with conditions and reporting requirements. The first $700 billion went out with basically no strings attached. In most cases the recipients have socked the money away rather than lending it, which was the whole idea -- to get money flowing again so the economy could pick up.
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>FWIW, according to Marshal who, among other things, is on the board of a bank, one reason some banks have been socking the money away instead of lending it that, due to losses, they're undercapitalized by government regulation. That is, by law, the amount of money a bank can lend is a function of how much it has (and no, it's not as simple as 1-1 <s>).
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>Tamar

part of the banks capitalization problem is that they really don't know how much some of their "assets" are worth. So much for complex derivatives.