Not long ago, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner described the key ingredient in a sound global financial system: “Capital, capital, capital.” He’s right about the ingredient. But when it comes to the world’s banks, he and his international counterparts are all wrong about the proportions. Capital is the amount of money, or equity, that a bank’s shareholders put at risk -- like a down payment on a house. It’s also the simplest way to protect the economy from the risks big banks naturally take. The more capital banks have, the less likely they are to go bankrupt and trigger crises like the one the world is still ... (full story)