Barroso blames it all on America – only the German banks went bust first
SO, Barosso, the President of the European Commission has this to say about the current euro disaster:
“This crisis was not originated in Europe … seeing as you mention North America, this crisis originated in North America and much of our financial sector was contaminated by, how can I put it, unorthodox practices, from some sectors of the financial market.”
Which is interesting because it’s complete tosh.
The first two European banks to go bust were German: and they did indeed go bust because they’d bought lots of that dodgy American CDO stuff. But after that…
Northern Rock was a standard bank run, nothing to do with the Americans. RBS simply paid too much for ABN Amro at the top of the market. Lloyds would be fine if it hadn’t been pressured into buying HBOS: and HBOS went bust on plain vanilla UK mortgages. Dunfermline Building Society screwed up over commercial property loans. The Greek banks are OK actually, if only they didn’t own lots of Greek Government debt which has fallen in value. The Spanish banks are entirely screwed by local, mutally owned, not for profit banks splurging money on property speculation, as is Ireland. If this looks like anything American it’s the 1980s savings and loans disaster: the reason it’s worse in Spain is because those local banks were being run by politicians not crooks.
The first and most important part of working out how to deal with a crisis is to correctly identify why there is a crisis. This one just isn’t because we came all over American. That the Pres. of the EU Commission thinks it is just shows how fucking fucked we all are.
Posted: 19th, June 2012 | In: Money Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
