Monday, September 29, 2008

More Bank Failures

PARIS — Just days after Washington brokered the sale of Washington Mutual, the largest American savings and loan, regulators in Britain and Belgium swooped in to engineer rescues of two leading banks with heavy exposure to soured mortgages.

...

“With financial markets experiencing a serious risk of seizure and the real economy continuing to lose momentum, we think that the outlook is getting gloomier by the day,” said Aurelio Maccario, chief euro-zone economist at UniCredit Markets and Investment Banking in Milan. “Financial conditions keep tightening and the massive liquidity injections guaranteed by the E.C.B. have done little to alleviate the problem.”

...

The collapse of several European banks, and the problems in the property and mortgage markets, have raised questions about whether Europe should come up with a shadow version of the bailout deal agreed to Sunday by American lawmakers. Europe and Japan rejected such a notion last week, although some economists say Europe may eventually be required to take sweeping action.

“The claims made by some that they are well insulated from the events of the last few months clearly look somewhat threadbare,” Huw Worthington and Moyeen Islam, analysts at Barclays Capital, wrote in a research note.


And now anther Freddie Mac / Fannie Mae video

No comments: