Banks’ Health Going Public

Prepare for more transparency: The Obama administration is planning to make public the results of the “stress tests’ being conducted on the country’s 19 biggest banks, a move that would make it easier to tell which banks are thriving and which are barely surviving. The government has made a point of treating all banks equally so as not to spark a bank run on any particular institution; both the strong and the weak received billions from the federal government to mask the fact that some needed the cash much more than others. But if the stress tests are publicized, and if certain big banks like Goldman Sachs are allowed to begin paying back their debts from the TARP, the era of all banks created equal will end.