Vague stress test report no fix for investor anxiety

The Fed released a 21 page report on its stress test methodology. It was so vague that there'll be no help for investors who want to try to figure out which of the 19 banks undergoing the test will need to raise capital and which won't. The focus of these tests is to measure how much common equity banks have. But we already knew that.

The Fed is overseeing 150 banking regulators who asked banks to estimate their loan losses based on forecasts of broad economic statistics -- for example, unemployment rising to 10.3 percent by next year, home prices falling an additional 22 percent this year, and the economy contracting by 3.3 percent this year and staying flat in 2010.