Financial Crisis: So much for tirades against American greed - Telegraph: "It took a weekend to shatter the complacency of German finance minister Peer Steinbrück. Last Thursday he told us that the financial crisis was an 'American problem', the fruit of Anglo-Saxon greed and inept regulation that would cost the United States its 'superpower status'. Pleas from US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson for a joint US-European rescue plan to halt the downward spiral were rebuffed as unnecessary. By Monday, Mr Steinbrück was having to orchestrate Germany's biggest bank bail-out, putting together a €35 billion loan package to save Hypo Real Estate. By then Europe was 'staring into the abyss,' he admitted. Belgium faced worse. It had to nationalise Fortis (with Dutch help), a 300-year-old bastion of Flemish finance, followed a day later by a bail-out for Dexia (with French help).
Within hours they were all trumped by Dublin. The Irish government issued a blanket guarantee of the deposits and debts of its six largest lenders in the most radical bank bail-out since the Scandinavian rescues in the early 1990s. Then France upped the ante with a €300 billion pan-European lifeboat for the banks. The drama has exposed Europe's dark secret for all to see. EU banks took on even more debt leverage than their US counterparts, despite the tirades against ''le capitalisme sauvage'' of the Anglo-Saxons."
----------------
I made note below of Steinbruck's condescension. Now it turns out that our sophisticated European betters, from whom we in the colonies need to learn so much, are in even worse shape due to their own risky credit practices.
No comments:
Post a Comment