“Did they really? Well,bless me!”

I see word reached Robert Peston at the Beeb a while back (16:13 GMT) that a few teeny banks in somewhere unpronounceable failed the Eurobank stress tests…but everyone else got an A*.

Only the insouciant arrogance of the eurocrat and banking classes could pull a stunt like this and hope to get away with it. (See 16:55 posting about how 70+% of the foreign sovereign bond holding liabilities have been ignored in the ‘test’).

The Slog now has some more detail from our Brussels underground tunneller. It seems the Trichet crowd have been taking lessons from UK examination boards in terms of how to lower bars sorry hit targets sorry improve standards. Says the Belgium-based snout in the black velvet waistcoat:

“They decided a fortnight ago that full-maturity bond liabilities would scare everyone to death. So book traded value is it. It is a fantasy, but then that’s nothing new”.