But as Bonddad notes on dKos

The basic problem is the value of the assets that are dropping in value.  Everybody wants to waive a magic wand and make them more valuable.  To quote the Mike Meyers' character Fat Bastard, "that's crap."  These assets are cheap because they're cheap.  In some cases they aren't worth the paper they are printed on.  And yet everybody thinks they're worth more then the market will value them at right now.  Maybe they will be, maybe they won't.  But right now the market says they're not worth anything.  We can't simply say "they're worth more because of all these assumptions."  Those assumptions could just as easily be wrong as they are right.

And that leads to the central problem: we're in a period of massive asset deflation.  Housing is dropping like a stone.  Hence, lots of mortgages are underwater -- meaning the mortgage is worth more than the house.  That means people increasingly default on their mortgages.  That means assets backed by mortgages (like mortgage backed bonds that are causing the current problem) will continue to drop in value.  And no magic wand can make those mortgage backed assets more valuable

And these assets pollute the balance sheets of european banks as well. Plus the collapsing global economy is damaging the price of assets all over, even Russia's taken a hit, so it is only natural that all asset based valuations are hit.

The question is not whether the ECB should work in concert with national financial institutions, but what underlying philosphy they use in tackling the problem. If they see it as liquidity, then they throw good money after bad. If they see it as a failure of corporate philosophy requiring intervention and firings and revised regulatory and taxtion schemes with regulatory boundaries turned into actively policed borders then some good will come of it.

Infrastructure is finally the responsibility of government. Privatisation of utilities hasn't really worked because there is a tension between short term shareholder profit and long term planning that cannot be resolved in the private sector. So we now establish that banks are conduits of capital, as such they are quasi-infrastructure entities which need to be heavily controlled at EU level with the bias towards the consumer and industry and not to financial parasitical profit.

keep to the Fen Causeway