Bureaucrats have long come up with plans that are messy in the short term and pointless in the long term. The US Treasury’s stress tests add to this history. At first, banks were told to keep schtum over their scores; the Treasury would reveal all after May 4. Now it seems banks may be releasing their own results that week.

That would guarantee a crazy five days with banks filing at different times and numbers being presented in the most flattering way or challenged outright. Worse, banks already know their results. Those that have passed will not be firing anyone for leaking. Meanwhile, rumours are flying round that Citigroup, Bank of America and a clutch of regional banks have failed and are scrambling round for capital. Shares in Citi on Tuesday fell nearly 6 per cent while those of Bank of America fell almost 10 per cent after earlier losses were mitigated by a sharp rise in consumer confidence data for April. This is no way to run a financial market. The Treasury must simply come clean now.