Markets Cheer Stress Test Double Speak

"Financial stocks did well on the belief that most of the big banks would get clean bills of health. But that was the plan from the outset, to validate that the system was more or less OK so that if the poor chump taxpayer had to stump up more money, it could be positioned as due to completely unforeseen events (thanks to having put on very big blinkers) yet still a good risk. The cheer seems a naive view. Citi is far from out of the woods, and with a half trillion of foreign deposits, plus nearly $1 billion in off balance sheet exposures (remember those SIVs, the watchword of late 2007?). Dislocation there would have far bigger ramifications."