Saturday, July 24, 2010

Not So Stressful (Pass the Greek Valium, Please)

Wall Street Journal
July 24, 2010

Two months ago, credit markets in Europe nearly went off the rails over concern about what a sovereign debt default in Greece would do to the Continent's banks. After last night's release of the result of a Europe-wide stress test, we're not much wiser.

The EU's committee of national bank regulators repeatedly says that its stress test includes a "sovereign shock" scenario. But crucially, "a sovereign default was not included in the exercise," in the dry language of the committee's summary report. This means the test only looked at government debt held in trading portfolios, while ignoring any government bonds listed as held to maturity.

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