The capital bases of the banks have been depleted.
After each of those bailout actions, further loan losses quickly eroded the banks' capital bases.
The lender's major subsidiaries are all incorporated entities, with their own capital bases and balance sheets.
It added, however, that the costs could disrupt the capital bases of smaller regional insurers.
In Japan, too, banks have lots of preferred shares in their capital bases.
Banks entered this crisis with stronger capital bases than they had going into the savings-and-loan debacle of the 1980s.
The most important changes -- requiring them to build stronger capital bases and rely less on short-term funding -- are already under way.
They have small capital bases and therefore, in the good times, enormous returns on equity often as much as 30%, sometimes much more.
Banks have seen their capital bases shrink as write-downs have eaten into equity and off-balance-sheet assets have been reabsorbed.
"People who say we need to inject more public money to boost the banks' capital bases do not understand the situation at all," he said.
Banks are expecting more loans to go sour and heavier losses on impaired assets as the recession bites deeper, eating into their capital bases.
