Before discussing how declines in bank charters and bank branches influence how we think about the competitive impact of mergers in certain markets, it should be noted that how we measure competition today largely springs from a 1963 Supreme Court decision where the court held that the relevant product market for the purposes of analyzing a bank merger is the “cluster of products .
Second, as I have discussed throughout my time at the Board, I continue to look for ways to make our stress tests more transparent without making them game-able and without diluting their potency as a supervisory tool. I expect that we will continue to provide more transparency on the models we use for the stress tests, and on the hypothetical scenarios.