The nation's largest financial institutions are going under the microscope this week.  The US Treasury Department began administering stress tests yesterday, with the aim of determining whether the banks have the necessary capital to make it through two years of adverse economic conditions.  On yesterday evening's All Things Considered Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner described the purpose of the stress tests to NPR international business and economics correspondent Adam Davidson.

Geithner: What we want to do is to bring a more realistic, a more conservative, a more consistent, forward-looking assessment so that we are confident that these institutions are going to have the resources necessary to withstand a more challenging economic environment. And to do that we're gong to make sure they have support from the government — in terms of capital from the government — where that is necessary.

We know Davidson, and we've highlighted his work before.  He started Planet Money for NPR just as the global economic crisis struck last year. And his features for This American Life (Giant Pool of Money, parts 1 and 2 in particular), provide some of the clearest explanations of the root causes of the crisis.  And this interview is consistent wth his previous work. As Davidson presses Geithner on how the Treasury will go about administering the stress tests, he put the Secretary through a little bit of his own stress test.  You can catch the ATC interview here.   But there's more that didn't make it onto the ATC edited version.   The latest Planet Money podcast features the full interview with Geithner, and a description of the scene in Geithner's office.  Download, or take a listen to the full interview here. 

UPDATE: The Baseline Scenario reacts to the Geithner interview.