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I'd go further.

Keeping insolvent private banks alive is actively contributing to the crisis as well as actively ensuring the crisis persists.  The choices are:

  1.  Kill the banks and deal and have a major mess to clean-up

  2.  Kill the Real Economy in a vain attempt to save the banks which will kill the banks leaving catastrophe on our hands - which may not be solvable, I'd like to note.

The banks are dead, one way or the other.  The longer the SeriousPeople© try to keep 'em going the worse the final situation when they fall over.


She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre
by ATinNM on Mon May 9th, 2011 at 02:30:22 PM EST
[ Parent ]
But there is a major difference between a foreign regulator killing your insolvent banks and your own regulator killing your insolvent banks.

Given the quality of decision-making coming out of the Bundesbank et al, I am not convinced that the European policymakers would have been able to salvage a major banking blowup that happened on someone else's time table. Hell, they may not even be able to handle a blowup that happens on their own time table, but at least then they'd have a sporting chance.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Mon May 9th, 2011 at 02:54:39 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Whether the local (national) zombie banks are killed by local (national) regulators or by EU regulators is de minimus from an economic POV.

I grant there is a emotional side of equal (?) weight going counter to the pure economic analysis.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

by ATinNM on Mon May 9th, 2011 at 05:01:33 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Well, yes, but there's a difference between having them killed by European regulators versus having their balance sheets blown wide open by the Americans while everyone in Europe is still sitting on their hands.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue May 10th, 2011 at 09:24:12 AM EST
[ Parent ]

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