This is interesting. It seems that Timothy Geithner’s announcement of a bank rescue plan sent big name banks into full panic mode, because it looks like Goldman Sachs held an emergency meeting, which included, “20 of the firm’s biggest hedge fund and private equity clients from around the country,” as well as, “representatives of KKR, Fortress Investment Group , Bain Capital, Perry Capital, Capital Research, Putnam and Citadel.”

While Goldman claims that it was a regular meeting, CNBC’s report seems to indicate that this was not the case:

Goldman sachs says the meeting was planned well in advance. But people who attended tell CNBC that they received the invitation after the speech and decided to attend because of the speech. Goldman Sachs initially denied that the meeting, hosted by co-presidents John Winkelried and Gary Cohn, took place.

(emphasis mine)

Where I think the reporter did not go deep enough is to accept the line from the participants that this meeting was primarily about concerns that the plan is not coming together quickly enough.

That isn’t the sort of thing that has you call an emergency meeting. Something has them spooked.

My guess is that they are afraid that Geithner’s “stress testing”, which is a deep accounting analysis of their balance sheets, will show one, or more of the major banks (probably most of them) to be insolvent, and then the government will have no choice but to seize them.

I have this image of something resembling a meeting of Bond villains.