Showing posts with label bail-outs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bail-outs. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Economic Dynamics: Catch 22 or ....?

Philosophical, logical or faulty?

The recent analyses and concerns re the public finances in certain Southern European countries, as well as the UK and the United States, prompted me to consider the following sequence of syllogisms:

So let me see if I got that straight or not:

A) There was "systemic" trouble in the financial/banking world, originally caused to a large extent by subprimes (right or wrong so far? )

B) Then most governments/states spent loads of money to bail out or help institutions stay out of potential trouble, and

C) "now" the financial world is ...... (trying to find a proper word for it here) some of the states that either overspent on bailouts or preventive measures or whose finances are in large deficit ("imbalance") due to the fall in revenues (which is due to the economic recession that resulted from the subprime then financial then economic crisis)?

Is the preceding sequence of thoughts (algorithm)

a) on the mark or
b) missing the point?

What mark and what point though?

Friday, December 18, 2009

"If the climate was a bank they would already have saved it."

I do not agree with the ideology, policies and politics of Venezuela's old style Socialist President Hugo Chavez but I have to say that his comment at the COP15 Copenhagen UN Climate Change Conference holds, alas, water: "If the climate was a bank they would already have saved it."

According to The Economist, bank bailouts around the world have cost the equivalent of 5% of world GDP.
According to a study conducted for the UK government, Climate Change financing would cost 1% of world GDP per year.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Germany: Bank bail-outs

This week, the German cabinet agreed to propose to the parliament a scheme to enable the country's banks to remove remaining "toxic" assets from their balance sheets. How? The banks will be able to swap their toxic debt for government-backed bonds worth 90% of the value of the toxic assets. In return they will pay an annual fee. This toxic debt will be "stored" for up to 20 years. If approved by the parliament, the scheme will be financed by Germany's existing 500bn euros bank rescue fund.

NB: I recall, some weeks ago, that a proposal had been agreed by the German government cabinet (a historic coalition between the country's two main parties, the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats) that would allow for the temporary "nationalisation" of any German banks, if needed. I have not kept up with the issue (eg was it finally agreed and was it passed by the 2 chambers of the German parliament?), and I am not sure how it relates to the above scheme.
The Bank of England's announcement that it would keep interest rates unchanged at 0.5%. The Bank of England also said it would pump an extra BP 50 bn into the UK economy via purchases of government and corporate debt, extending its planned spending to £125bn.