The moment is approaching when the bankruptcy of the financial sector, a dead weight on the overall economy , has to be addresses. This “bail-in” or de-facto bankruptcy process will itself be painful, resulting in the wipeout of billions in shares and paper securities but it is the indispensable basis for reconstruction of the real economy.
Brussels and Amsterdam have joined London, France, Germany and Italy in hosting mass rallies in support of cash-strapped Greece. Demonstrators said the financial sector must take responsibility for the damage it caused.
To minimize the expense to euro zone taxpayers, European Union policymakers have drawn up a law under which shareholders, creditors and very large depositors will lose money first in the event of a bank failure.
For some reason many commentators fail to distinguish between bail-in, as is the case here, and bailout, as we saw in US/UK in 2008. The above makes it clear.
Germany’s cabinet has approved a package of draft laws which effectively give the go-ahead to Europe’s plans for banking union – the main confidence-building response to the crisis in the financial sector, a government source said yesterday.
– establishment of a bridge institution (the temporary transfer of good bank assets to a publicly controlled entity);
– asset separation (the transfer of impaired assets to an asset management vehicle)
– bail-in measures (the imposition of losses, with an order of seniority, on shareholders and unsecured creditors).
These measures lay the basis for Eurozone control of a banking system purged of its bad bebts, the costs to be met by shareholders and bondholders rather than the taxpayer. It marks the end of the bailouts of the banks. It will be interesting to see the response of the British government: they will not be able to veto it.
The Council today1 set out its position on a draft directive establishing a framework for the recovery and resolution of credit institutions and investment firms (11148/1/13 REV 1).
It’s either the banks or the real economy and Europe has just outlined a new approach completely divergent from that of the Anglosphere. In US/UK the survival of the banks is a categorical imperative and the means to achieve this is bailout without end via QE or money-printing. This statement from Europe signals that the banks are to allowed to go under or rather, implicitly, a new banking system, Euroland regulated and subordinate to general economic development is to created. This is a welcome development and any Anglo-Saxon schadenfreude regarding the inevitable pain accompanying it will prove to be misplaced. The QE approach is painless only to the banks: it has already seriously depleted deposits and can only lead to falls in both the pound and the dollar with devastating consequences for economies based on importing essential goods.
Cyprus bail-out: savers will be raided to save euro in future crises, says eurozone chief
The new policy will alarm hundreds of thousands of British expatriates who live and have transferred their savings, proceeds from house sales and other assets to eurozone bank accounts in countries such as France, Spain and Italy.
“For the Government, these sorts of figures are terrifying, implying some form of additional taxpayer support for either Lloyds Banking Group, or more particularly, the Royal Bank of Scotland, in which it has major stakes.”
Britain’s banks are under-capitalised. Not just by a little bit, but a lot. Under the Bank of England’s worst-case estimate, lenders need to raise something in the order of £60bn, more than three times the amount required to bail out Cyprus, which gives some idea of the scale of the problems officials think the industry faces.
Officially, since June 2009 the US economy has been undergoing an economic recovery from the December 2007 recession. But where is this recovery? I cannot find it, and neither can millions of unemployed Americans.
This seems a good moment to revisit Willem Buiter 2008 analysis of the UK economy and, particularly, his view on a possible simultaneous banking, government bonds and sterling crisis.
Own goal! Osbourne may have intervened to protect City/Wall Street bondholders, including the ubiquitous Goldman, but tipping Ireland over the edge imperils the recklessly exposed British banks who led the way in the Irish property bubble. The moment of truth approaches, the moment of the second bailout of the City. This time it has to be stopped.
Irish Dan is a former Sinn Fein activist and National Exectuive member, involved in the Irish Revolutionary Movement from 1969 up to recent
years.
Part one, general background.
Ireland is burst, broke, finished, kaput! This story has dominatied the World Media for over two years and has reached a deafening crescendo in recent days. Like most of what we read in the media ,it is lies, disinformation and propaganda. The facts are far different!
The €85 billion bailout agreed on Sunday evening between the European Union, International Monetary Fund and the Irish government will enforce the demands of the financial elite through the further impoverishment of the working class. It will ensure that those responsible for the current crisis are protected from any losses, while state finances will be raided once again to bail out insolvent financial institutions.
In These New Times 