Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"This is a new effort by the administration to determine the financial viability of banks and to assess how much aid will be needed to help the banking system. And what's going to happen is banks' balance sheets are going to be subjected to various economic scenarios in terms of severity of the recession. So, for example, they're going to say, ok, if we assume the recession gets worse by 10 percent, what would this do to the solvency of banks? On the other hand, if we assume the recession gets worse by 25 percent, what will this do to the solvency of banks? They're going to do this for all the major banks, and that will help them identify those banks that are going to be most in trouble. Now, the next step after they do that is - alright, they've identified the troubled banks - how are they going to help them? Should some of them be closed? Should they be merged? Should their assets be sold? Should the government simply come in a take them over? Those questions are unanswered, but the stress test, if you will, is the first step to putting a price tag on keeping our financial system afloat."