Stressing the Positive

By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT

Hooray! The banking crisis is over! Let’s party! O.K., maybe not.

In the end, the actual release of the much-hyped bank stress tests on Thursday came as an anticlimax. Everyone knew more or less what the results would say: some big players need to raise more capital, but over all, the kids, I mean the banks, are all right. Even before the results were announced, Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, told us they would be “reassuring.”

But whether you actually should feel reassured depends on who you are: a banker, or someone trying to make a living in another profession.

I won’t weigh in on the debate over the quality of the stress tests themselves, except to repeat what many observers have noted: the regulators didn’t have the resources to make a really careful assessment of the banks’ assets, and in any case they allowed the banks to bargain over what the results would say. A rigorous audit it wasn’t.

But focusing on the process can distract from the larger picture. What we’re really seeing here is a decision on the part of President Obama and his officials to muddle through the financial crisis, hoping that the banks can earn their way back to health.

(More here.)