Wells Fargo Chairman: Treasury Plan "Asinine"

Inarguably one of the top banking minds in the United States, Wells Fargo Chairman Richard Kovacevich railed against the TARP rules and says that the administration's "stress test" plans for banks is "asinine."

“Is this America -- when you do what your government asks you to do and then retroactively you also have additional conditions?” Kovacevich said. “If we were not forced to take the TARP money, we would have been able to raise private capital at that time” and not needed to cut the dividend to preserve cash, he said.

Further, he said that the administration nearly took down the entire industry with its idiotic and incompetent stress-test plan:

“We do stress tests all the time on all of our portfolios,” Kovacevich said. “We share those stress tests with our regulators. It is absolutely asinine that somebody would announce we’re going to do stress tests for banks and we’ll give you the answer in 12 weeks.”

He's obviously correct - if regulators already reviewing banks aren't trustworthy, why have them at all? Further, who is more knowledgeable about banking in this country - the Chairman of one of the most successful banks in the country and a key holding of Warren Buffett's - or a President who never held a private sector job in his life?