Re: OT- La più grande c

Il Mon, 06 Oct 2008 12:25:58 +0200, Giampaolo Lomi
<gialo3TOGLI@fastwebnet.it> ha scritto:

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>Financial Crises Spread in Europe
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>Published: October 5, 2008
>European nations scrambled on Sunday night to prevent a growing credit
>crisis from bringing down major banks and alarming savers as troubles
>in financial markets spread around the world, accelerating economic
>downturns on three continents.
>
>The German government moved to guarantee all private savings accounts
>in the country on Sunday, hoping to reassure depositors who had grown
>nervous as efforts to bail out a large German lender and a major
>European financial company failed.
>
>Late Sunday, it was disclosed that new bailouts had been arranged for
>both of those companies, Hypo Real Estate, the German lender, and
>Fortis, a large banking and insurance company based in Belgium but
>active across much of the Continent.
>
>The spreading worries came days after the United States Congress
>approved a $700 billion bailout package that officials had hoped would
>calm financial markets globally.
>
>The moves came as federal regulators were trying to help resolve a
>merger fight in the United States that could make investors more
>uneasy. Court hearings were under way in New York on Sunday over
>competing efforts by Citigroup and Wells Fargo to acquire Wachovia, a
>large bank that nearly failed a week ago.
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>In Europe, meanwhile, the crisis appears to be the most serious one to
>face the Continent since a common currency, the euro, was created in
>1999. Jean Pisani-Ferry, director of the Bruegel research group in
>Brussels, said Europe confronted ā€œour first real financial crisis, and
>itā€™s not just any crisis. Itā€™s a big one.ā€
>
>The European Central Bank has aggressively lent money to banks as the
>crisis has grown. It had resisted lowering interest rates, but
>signaled on Thursday that it might cut rates soon. The extra money,
>aimed at ensuring that banks would have adequate access to cash, has
>not reassured savers or investors, and European stock markets have
>performed even worse than the American markets.
>
>In Iceland, government officials and banking chiefs were discussing a
>possible rescue plan for the country's commercial banks. In Berlin,
>Chancellor Angela Merkel and her finance minister, Peer SteinbrĆ¼ck,
>appeared before television cameras to promise that all bank deposits
>would be protected, although it was not clear whether legislation
>would be needed to make that promise good.
>
>Mindful of the rising public anger at the use of public money to
>buttress the business of high-earning bankers, Mrs. Merkel promised a
>day of reckoning for them as well. ā€œWe are also saying that those who
>engaged in irresponsible behavior will be held responsible,ā€ she said.
>ā€œThe government will ensure that. We owe it to taxpayers.ā€
>
>Stock markets fell sharply in early trading on Monday in Asia on
>growing fears about the health of European banks and the resilience of
>the global economy.
>
>The Nikkei 225 index dropped 3.4 percent in Tokyo on Monday, the Kospi
>index in Seoul fell 3.7 percent and the Standard and Poorā€™s/Australian
>Stock Exchange 200 index in Sydney declined 3.3 percent. The events in
>Berlin and Brussels underscored the failure of Europeā€™s case-by-case
>approach to restoring confidence in the Continentā€™s increasingly
>jittery banking sector. A European summit meeting Saturday did little
>to calm worries.
>
>President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and his counterparts from Germany,
>Britain and Italy vowed to prevent a Lehman-like bankruptcy in Europe
>but they did not offer an American-style bailout package.
>
>The crisis has underlined the difficulty of taking concerted action in
>Europe because its economies are far more integrated than its
>governing structures.
>
>ā€œWe are not a political federation,ā€ Jean-Claude Trichet, the
>president of the European Central Bank, said. ā€œWe do not have a
>federal budget.ā€
>
>Last week, Ireland moved to guarantee both deposits and other
>liabilities at six major banks. There was grumbling in London and
>Berlin about the move giving those banks an unfair advantage. But
>Germany proposed its deposit guarantee Sunday after Britain raised its
>guarantee to Ā£50,000, or almost $90,000, from Ā£35,000.
>
>Unlike in the United States, where deposits are fully guaranteed up to
>a limit of $250,000 ā€” a figure that was raised from $100,000 last week
>ā€” deposits in most European countries have been only partially
>guaranteed, sometimes by groups of banks rather than governments. In
>Germany, the first 90 percent of deposits up to 20,000 euros, or about
>$27,000, was guaranteed.
>
>The Paris meeting produced a promise that European leaders would work
>together to halt the financial crisis and reassure nervous investors,
>but even before the meeting began it was becoming clear that two
>bailouts announced the week before had not succeeded and that a major
>Italian bank might be in trouble. That bank, Unicredit, announced
>plans on Sunday to raise as much as 6.6 billion euros, or $9 billion,
>in capital.
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>Fortis, which only a week ago received 11.2 billion euros from the
>governments of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, was unable to
>continue its operations. On Friday, the Dutch government seized its
>operations in that country, and Sunday night the Belgian government
>helped to arrange for BNP-Paribas, the French bank, to take over what
>was left of the company.



SECONDA PARTE

In Berlin, the government arranged a week ago for major banks to lend
35 billion euros to Hypo, but that fell apart when the banks concluded
that more money would be needed. Late Sunday, the government said a 50
billion euro package had been arranged, with the government and other
banks participating.

The credit crisis began in the United States, a fact that has led
European politicians to claim superiority for their countryā€™s
financial systems, in contrast to what Silvio Berlusconi, Italyā€™s
prime minister, called the ā€œspeculative capitalismā€ of the United
States. On Saturday, Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, said
the crisis ā€œhas come from America,ā€ and Mr. Berlusconi bemoaned the
lack of business ethics that had been exposed by the crisis.
Many of the European banksā€™ problems have stemmed from bad loans in
Europe, and Fortis got into trouble in part by borrowing money to make
a major acquisition. But activities in the United States have played a
role. Bankers said Sunday that the additional need for funds at Hypo
came from newly discovered guarantees it had issued to back American
municipal bonds that it had sold to investors.
The credit market worries came on top of heightening concerns about
economic growth in Europe and the United States. Many economists think
there are recessions in both areas, and one also appears to have
started in Japan, where the Nikkei newspaper reported Monday that a
poll of corporate executives found that 94 percent thought the
countryā€™s economy was deteriorating.

ā€œUnless there is a material easing of credit conditions,ā€ said Bob
Elliott of Bridgewater Associates, an American money management firm,
after the retail sales figures were announced, ā€œit is unlikely that
demand will turn around soon.ā€

Almost unnoticed as the United States Congress approved a $700 billion
bailout for banks last week, it also agreed to guarantee $25 billion
in loans for Americaā€™s troubled automakers. European automakers said
Sunday they would seek similar aid from the European Commission.

Henry M. Paulson Jr., the United States Treasury secretary, hoped that
approval of the American bailout, which will involve buying securities
from banks at more than their current market value, would free up
credit by making cash available for banks to lend and by reassuring
participants in the credit markets.

But that did not happen last week. Instead, credit grew more expensive
and harder to get as investors became more skittish about buying
commercial paper, essentially short-term loans to companies. Rates on
such loans rose so fast that some feared the market could essentially
close, leaving it to already-stressed banks to provide short-term
corporate loans.

Altria, the parent company of the cigarette maker Philip Morris, said
lenders wanted it to delay its planned $10.3 billion acquisition of
UST, another tobacco maker, until 2009, but promised it would complete
the deal.

Europeā€™s need to scramble is in part the legacy of a decision to
establish the euro, which 15 countries now use, but not follow up with
a parallel system of cross-border regulation and oversight of private
banks.

ā€œFirst we had economic integration, then we had monetary integration,ā€
said Sylvester Eijffinger, a member of the monetary expert panel
advising the European parliament. ā€œBut we never developed the parallel
political and regulatory integration that would allow us to face a
crisis like the one we are facing today,ā€ he added.

In Brussels, Daniel Gros, director of the Center for European Policy
Studies, agreed. ā€œMaybe they will be shocked into thinking more
strategically instead of running behind events,ā€ he said. ā€œThe later
you come, the higher the bill.ā€

While the European Central Bank has power over interest rates and
broader monetary policy, it was never granted parallel oversight of
private banks, leaving that task to dozens of regulators across the
Continent.

This patchwork system includes national central banks in each of the
euro-zoneā€™s 15 members and they still retain broad powers within their
own borders, further complicating any regional approach to
problem-solving.

The European economic landscape today bears little resemblance to the
1990s, when the groundwork for the euro was laid. Back then, Mr.
Pisani-Ferry recalled, few banks in Europe had cross-border operations
on a significant scale.
A wave of mergers over the last decade created giants like HSBC and
Deutsche Bank, which straddle continents and have major American
exposure.
"The European banking landscape was transformed fairly recently,ā€ Mr.
Pisani-Ferry said. ā€œWhen the euro was first introduced, the question
of cross-border regulation didnā€™t really arise.ā€

Optimists say one potential long-term benefit from the current turmoil
is that it often takes a crisis to propel European integration
forward.
ā€œProgress in Europe is usually the result of a crisis,ā€ Mr. Eijffinger
said. ā€œThis could be one of those rare moments in E.U. history.ā€


>Mr. Dougherty reported from Frankfurt, Mr. Schwartz from Paris and Mr.
>Norris from New York. Katrin Bennhold and David Jolly contributed
>reporting from Paris.
>