The simultaneous review, by common methods, of the nation’s largest banking firms also helped us better evaluate the resilience of the system as a whole, including the capacity of the banking system to continue to make credit available to households and businesses if the economy were to perform very poorly.
Because stress tests will be an enduring part of the supervisory toolkit, we are evaluating the recent exercise particularly closely to identify both the elements that worked well and the areas in which execution and communication can be improved.