And so The Wall Street Journal reports that 10 of the 19 banks undergoing stress tests will have to boost their capital and that list might include Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Citigroup. The fundamental question is not just whether those banks are solvent. It's whether the stress tests are way too easy for the banks to get through. Are the stress tests any good?

Critics of the tests say that the standards of these tests are weak. They have set the hurdle far too low and the prospect of any bank failing it is more indicative of the weakness of that bank. As risk scholar Nassim Nicholas Taleb says, the stress tests are the "equivalent of testing the Brooklyn Bridge by running a single heavy truck on it".

As Bloomberg's Mark Gilbert points out, it's a meaningless exercise when taxpayers around the world are on the hook for the billions upon billions of dollars, euros, pounds and whatever other currency the world's central banks are pumping into the capital markets. "It is a meaningless exercise to gauge the inadequacies of U.S. banks while they don't even have to mark-to-market and the entire financial system is still addicted to taxpayer cash," Gilbert writes.

Economist Nouriel Roubini argues that the stress tests are actually "fudge tests" because they are based on economic data that's wrong.

So are the stress tests for real? Or are they designed to stop panic?