[DEBATE] : - Leaking Under Stress... negotiating the "stress"

[Riaz K Tayob]

Leaking under stress Krugman 4 May

John Hempton has a good question, which other people have asked me: who 
is leaking about the stress tests?

Traditionally, leaks to the press come from officials trying to curry 
favor with journalists, who will treat them favorably in the future. 
(See Woodward, Bob.) But that's kind of hard to see as a motive in the 
case of the relevant economic officials here — possible, or maybe it's 
people on the political side of the White House, but it doesn't feel right.

Alternatively, there's Yves Smith's version: these are all trial 
balloons to see how outsiders will react to different stress reports.

But that just adds to the bad feeling about all this. Even Brad DeLong, 
who has been relatively sympathetic to the administration here, is 
disturbed by the idea that regulators are negotiating with the banks 
about the test results. Now it seems as if the report's contents may 
also be dictated by what, based on the response to leaks, the informed 
public is willing to swallow. ("Would you believe it if we say Citi is 
fine? OK, what if we say they need $5 billion? Not enough? How about 10?")

I hope I'm not being too cynical here. But it would be nice if the 
administration would, just once, do something to dispel that cynicism.

Leaking under stress - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com (7 May 2009)

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/leaking-under-stress/?emc=eta1