"I used to say: 'there is a God-shaped hole in me.' For a long time I stressed the absence, the hole. Now I find it is the shape which has become more important." --Salman Rushdie

"Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it." --Lily Tomlin

"Sometimes when people are under stress, they hate to think, and it's the time when they most need to think." --Bill Clinton

"The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another." --William James "

"This s**t is stressing me OUT." --Dave Chappelle

The Administration ritual called the stress tests has passed and, with all of its unseemly twists and turns,  accomplished what the Treasury and bankers wanted. They bought time. The critics, like Bill Black, are certainly correct. Examination of financial institutions should be an ongoing and thorough part of the government's responsibility.   The results of latest stress test should be at the fingertips of the Fed Chairman and Treasury Secretary at every moment (to the extent that one has any confidence in the false precision of valuations of complex toxic assets). This was ritual. A confidence game.  Salesmanship, not analysis.

Forbearance may be the least worst alternative for the taxpayer, though I am inclined to doubt it.  Our financial officials have created the appearance of motion.   Yet, as some of the most market savvy minds are saying,  "Why did they not force these guys to raise capital NOW when market valuations are rising,  investors appear underweight, and some are short, the financial stocks.

Mr Market, as Warren Buffett calls him,  is giving the authorities a window to raise capital on terms far more favorable than we saw in early March.   Yet bankers appear, understandably, to want to avoid dilution.  After all they are now being told that when they go down in the ditch they will get a constellation of support, guarantees, preferred stock at sub market prices, and the ability to continue to bargain for favorable terms.

The dirty secret here may be that the bankers do not want to "keep these firms private."  Rather they want to keep lemon socialism (socialization of losses, privatization of gains) on the table as the modus operandi. They like their odds of using the government for their purposes.    No change in market structure, no change in incentives and the role of the government.  Even after the ugly unmasking associated with hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies.

You think I am being "too dark"?  Maybe but listen to two who know: Rodgin Cohen, of Sullivan Cromwell and Goldman Sachs' outside council, the financial legal equivalent of Quentin Tarrantino's  "The Wolf" in Pulp Fiction, saying “The system will look more like what preceded the current environment than many people seem to believe.” Cohen said this yesterday at a panel discussion on the future of Wall Street sponsored by Bloomberg News in New York. "I am far from convinced there was something inherently wrong with the system," he added.

Or Charles Munger, Warren Buffett's partner at Berkshire Hathaway is quoted in Bloomberg as follows "Charles Munger, whose company is the largest private shareholder in Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co., said banks will use their 'enormous political power' to prevent changes to the industry that would benefit society."

"This is an enormously influential group of people, and 90 percent of that influence is being spent to gain powers and practices that the world would be better off without," Munger, 85, said yesterday in an interview with Bloomberg Television. "It will be very hard to accomplish the kind of surgery that would be desirable for the wider civilization."

For the taxpayer,  we may be heading from "Change We Can Believe in" to "Got any spare change?"

Rob Johnson is a Senior Fellow and the Director of the Project on Global Finance at the Roosevelt Institute.