The Idiotic Stress Test Rollout

The Treasury is going forward with its release of stress test data to the markets, beginning privately tomorrow and then releasing them to the public on May 4. I'm guessing that some data or at least rumors of data, will begin to leak out before then.

Not only is the entire idea ill-conceived, but the entire rollout of the results is going to increase volatility, speculation and instability in the banking sector over the next two weeks. And in some cases, I think these stress tests will create a self-fulfilling prophecy out of fear of a failure. If there is a worse way to try to stabilize the financial system, I can't think of one.