...and the Journal blesses the stress tests. PR-wise, this strikes me as the most important line written about the whole exercise so far:
The stress tests -- designed to examine individual banks' ability to withstand future losses -- helped alleviate the near-panic that investors felt at the beginning of the year as many worried some banks might have to be nationalized.
There are qualifications in the piece, to be sure. But I can't imagine Treasury and the White House are displeased with this sort of coverage. Whether the stress tests turn out to be a substantive success remains to be seen, of course.
--Noam Scheiber