Government May Make Public Some Results of Banks ‘Stress Test’

The Obama administration is considering making public some results of the stress tests being conducted on the country’s 19 largest banks, The Wall Street Journal reported late Tuesday night citing people familiar with the matter.

From The WSJ: It isn’t clear precisely what information the government might disclose. It remains possible the data won’t be specific to individual banks. But some within the administration believe a certain amount of information needs to be released in order to provide assurance about the validity and rigor of the assessments. In addition, these people also are concerned that the tests won’t be able to fulfill their basic function of shoring up confidence unless investors are able to see data for themselves.
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Staff at the various regulatory agencies have been discussing the matter for several weeks and are expected to brief top regulators as soon as this week.

This move, combined with Q1 bank earnings and the push by some financial institutions to raise new capital and repay their bailout funds, could lay the groundwork for a new phase in the financial crisis, the Journal said.

This obviously raises the question about the conditions of those banks the information will not be made public.

Big banks – those with more than $100 bln in assets – will have to carry out supervised analysis by the end of this month.

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