As noted earlier [8]when we said that Jamie Dimon (who just happens [9]to be one of two Class A directors at the NY Fed) just showed the Fed who is boss, the Fed has now been "forced" to release the Stress Test results today at 4:30 pm instead of as previously scheduled on March 15. Jamie Dimon is now officially defining the Fed's timetable. This is all in jest of course: Dimon would never do anything without preauthorization from Bill Dudley, which means that even as the FOMC statement was a big yawn, the JPM release less than an hour later was planned purely to ramp stocks into the close on the lack of a definitive promise by the Fed to keep printing. Well played gents.
The WSJ [10]has more on this glaring example of just who runs stuff in this banana republic:
The Federal Reserve will release the results of its latest stress tests today at 4:30 p.m. Eastern time, two days before it had planned to unveil the sensitive review of big banks.
The schedule change came after J.P. Morgan Chase & Co . sent out a news release announcing it had passed the stress test. J.P. Morgan said it will raise its dividend and authorized a $15 billion stock repurchase program.
Bankers were scrambling Tuesday after the unexpected timing of J.P. Morgan's announcement. Several bankers said they are pleased with their banks' results but weren't willing to give out specifics before the Fed's own statement.
The Fed had planned to release the results of this year's Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review, or stress tests, on Thursday afternoon. It decided to move up the timing after some banks had disclosed their results, the Fed said. The tests look at how the 19 biggest U.S. banks would fare in a severe downturn, including an unemployment rate of 13%, a 21% decline in housing prices and a 50% drop in equity prices.