[mp3 free]

LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...,6310880.story

The chief executives of the nation's three biggest banks — JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. — are fighting speculation that they are in trouble and leading the nation back into recession.

Banking stocks have recently slumped to levels not seen since Wall Street's meltdown three years ago, when the industry received a massive government bailout to avert collapse. They also led the market's huge dive Wednesday, when the Dow Jones industrial average plunged 520 points.

...

Analysts have tended to agree that banks are much safer than they were in 2008. This time around, banks have also squirreled away reserves to deal with future losses, which they did not have three years ago.

There is also much less risk being taken by the banks since the financial crisis. Wall Street had multiplied each bet they took with leverage, giving them much farther to fall when the economy went bad. Sinegal estimates that big American banks are about three times less leveraged than they were four years ago.