Bank examinations, like the recent "stress test," yield information of interest to the market. Releasing those results may increase transparency. For routine annual bank exams, however, doing so could impede a supervisor's ability to collect information.

The expansion of the federal financial safety net has increased the incentives for financial firms to take on more risk than they would have otherwise. Yet current regulatory reform proposals do not address this root cause of financial instability. Sharply curtailing the financial safety net is...