Fed to Banks: Keep Quiet on Stress Tests

The Federal Reserve is adopting a loose-lips-sink-ships policy when it comes to the “stress tests” being administered to big US financial firms. Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and others have been ordered to keep quiet about their financial report cards, Bloomberg reports. Officials fear that should those results leak, investors would bail on the stock of any companies that look weak.

“If you allow banks to talk about it, people are just going to assume that the ones that don’t comment about it failed,” said one analyst. The tests are supposed to determine whether companies have enough capital to ride out the economic storm, particularly if the economy continues to shrink. (More Federal Reserve stories.)