Merrill Lynch (MER) shares rose 2% after CEO John Thain told a Japanese news agency the firm doesn’t need more capital. “We have plenty of capital going forward and we don’t need to come back into the equity market,” Thain told the Nikkei news service, Bloomberg reports.

The comments come just months after Merrill raised $6 billion from investors led by Singapore’s state-owned Temasek investment firm and Davis Selected Advisors of the United States, in the wake of billions of dollars of mortgage-related writedowns. Wall Street analysts expect to see more writedowns from Merrill in coming weeks when it reports first-quarter results.

Still, Thain’s optimistic remarks seem to offer a counterpoint to comments made Thursday in Washington by New York Fed President Timothy Geithner, who told the Senate Banking Committee that any overhaul of financial regulation should involve firms raising more capital to protect themselves against future losses. Investors are hoping firms can avoid more dilutive stock sales such as the one Lehman Brothers (LEH) undertook earlier this week to raise $4 billion, but Geithner warns that the financial storm may not have passed. “Policy makers and financial market participants need to continue to act forcefully,” Geithner said.

Are Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) heading out on the fundraising circuit again? The big mortgage companies’ regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, seems to be saying yes. OFHEO director James Lockhart tells Bloomberg in an interview published Friday that the companies may raise as much as $20 billion in new capital as part of last week’s deal freeing them to expand their purchases of mortgage securities. Fannie and Freddie raised almost $15 billion in new capital by selling preferred stock and cutting their dividends late last year, after hefty losses tied to souring mortgage markets depleted their cushions against future losses.

Lockhart’s comments come just two weeks after Freddie execs insisted they had enough capital to see their way through the housing mess. But that was before the government gave Fannie and Freddie and another government-sponsored entity, the Federal Home Loan Banks system, more leeway to buy mortgage-backed securities in a bid to support that market, which has been hit by the flight of risk-averse investors. News of the agreement, which also led OFHEO to pare back some capital surcharges on Fannie and Freddie, sent the companies’ shares soaring last Wednesday, as investors bet the move would boost revenue growth.

Fannie and Freddie will need to raise the capital “sooner rather than later,” Lockhart told Bloomberg this week. But for now, investors seem to be betting that sooner won’t be all that soon. Shares of the companies were down just 2% in midmorning action Friday.

Fannie Mae (FNM) could be under more pressure when trading opens Monday in New York. Shares fell almost 3% in Europe after an article over the weekend in Barron’s suggested the giant mortgage lender could need a government bailout if the housing market continues to swoon. “Its balance sheet is larded with soft assets and understated liabilities that would leave the company ill-equipped to weather a serious financial crisis,” Jonathan Laing writes. “And spiraling mortgage defaults and falling home prices could bring a tsunami of credit losses over the next two years that will severely test Fannie’s solvency.”

Worries about the financial strength of Fannie and other lenders consumed the market late last week, as shares in the banking sector fell sharply both Thursday and Friday. Fannie raised billions of dollars in new capital late last year through a sale of preferred stock, but a report in The Wall Street Journal hints that the company is considering going back to the trough as CEO Daniel Mudd makes his annual trip to Asia. With the market as turbulent as it has been, he tells the Journal, “You need to remain long capital.”

Bank of America (BAC) is joining the fundraising circuit. The banking giant set plans Wednesday for a $6 billion preferred stock offering. The moves come just a day after Bank of America posted a 95 percent drop in fourth-quarter profit, led by a sharp rise in its provision for loan losses and a $5 billion writedown of mortgage-related debt. The quarter showed Bank of America, while clearly better-managed than some struggling peers such as Citi (C), won’t be immune to the recession threatening U.S. consumers.

But unlike rivals such as Merrill Lynch (MER) and Citi, which tapped investment funds in Asia and the Middle East to replenish billions of dollars of capital following hefty writedowns, Bank of America is raising its money right here. The bank even says it will apply to list its convertible preferred stock on the New York Stock Exchange. So far, the “Buy American” theme is working: Bank of America shares, though still below their level at the end of 2007, were up nearly 6 percent in afternoon trading Wednesday.

Merrill Lynch (MER) got a $6.6 billion capital infusion from overseas investors. The big brokerage firm, which is looking at billions of dollars in losses tied to mortgage-related debt when it reports fourth-quarter earnings Thursday morning, said it sold preferred stock to buyers led by Korean Investment Corporation, Kuwait Investment Authority and Mizuho Corporate Bank. Merrill will pay 9 percent in the deal, which also includes  TPG-Axon Capital, The New Jersey Division of Investment, The Olayan Group and T. Rowe Price Associates.

The capital-raising move is the second in as many months for Merrill, which in December raised $6 billion from Singapore’s Temasek and U.S. firm Davis Selected Advisors. Tuesday’s move means the firm has raised nearly $13 billion in just the last month - though it’s worth noting that estimates of the firm’s mortgage-related writedowns could reach almost as high. “One of my main priorities over the last several weeks has been to ensure Merrill Lynch’s balance sheet is strong,” said CEO John Thain, “and these transactions make certain that Merrill Lynch is well-capitalized.” That’s the case for now, anyway.

Freddie Mac (FRE) is following in Citi’s footsteps to the fundraising trough. The government-sponsored mortgage investor slashed its quarterly dividend in half and set plans to raise $6 billion in new capital through two preferred stock issues. The decisions were announced late Tuesday, just a day after Citi (C) announced its $7.5 billion preferred stock sale to a fund run by the government of Abu Dhabi. CEO Dick Syron said the moves, which come a week after Freddie posted a $2 billion third-quarter loss that slashed its regulatory capital surplus by two-thirds, will “provide sufficient capital to continue fulfilling our important housing mission through the current market environment.”

Fortune’s Peter Eavis had predicted that Freddie and its sibling, Fannie Mae (FNM), would need to raise more capital to offset rising losses tied to soaring mortgage defaults. Freddie said it will sell the preferred stock “in the near term,” so it’s not clear what kind of yield — determined by its dividend – Freddie will have to offer. But given the 11% Citi paid to land its Middle East windfall, it seems reasonable to expect Freddie to have to pay a steep price. As Fortune’s Carol Loomis pointed out last week, investors are likely to demand compensation for Freddie’s inability to sell  them so-called cumulative preferred stock — the kind in which investors can later be made whole on any missed dividends.