Why Greece is going down and taking the world along:

[Turbineguy]

View: Gambling Bankers Need a Capital Intervention

Would you give money to a compulsive gambler who refused to kick the habit? In essence, that’s what the world’s biggest banks are asking taxpayers to do.

Ahead of a meeting of the Group of Seven industrialized nations’ finance ministers in Marseilles this week, bankers have been pushing for a giant bailout to put an end to Europe’s sovereign-debt troubles. To quote Deutsche Bank Chief Executive Officer Josef Ackermann: “Investors are not only asking themselves whether those responsible can summon the necessary willpower … but increasingly also whether enough time remains and whether they have the necessary resources available.”

Unfortunately, he’s right. As Bloomberg View has written, Europe’s leaders -- particularly Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy -- are running out of time to avert disaster. Their least bad option is to exchange the debts of struggling governments for jointly backed euro bonds and recapitalize banks. European banks have invested so heavily in the debt of Greece and other strapped governments, and have borrowed so much from U.S. institutions to do so, that the alternative would probably be the kind of systemic financial failure that could send the global economy back into a deep recession.

At the same time, bankers are campaigning against regulators’ efforts to address a root cause of the problem: Big banks’ addiction to excessive leverage, or to using borrowed money to boost their shareholders’ returns. In a recent flurry of letters to the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, which is in the process of setting new rules for the largest global institutions, various banking groups warn that higher capital requirements -- tantamount to putting limits on leverage -- will reduce credit availability and stunt the economy’s growth.

Read the rest:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-09/european-bankers-hooked-on-gambling-will-need-capital-intervention-view.html

[xchrom]

1. Recommend

[rurallib]

2. quite interesting and scary.

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. "re-capitalize" means: steal taxpayer money to prop up empty bank coffers.

Either the broke banks collapse or they break US the people and WE collapse.

and just what do WE the people do when our elected "representatives" refuse to represent WE the people?

[no_hypocrisy]

4. That's what happened to the Weimar Republic.

American investment banks lent huge sums of money to France and England to fight the First World War. War winding down, France and England "win". Banks want their money and want it "now". France and England don't have that kind of money and won't for a long while. France and England make it condition of surrender that Germany repay their war debt. Germany agrees. Germany doesn't have that kind of money. And remember, the reparations aren't to be used to rebuild Europe. It goes to the American bankers. The German economy takes a big hit as all of its money is going out of the country. Austerity is just scratching the surface of trying to go forward. In order to pay the debt sooner than later, more Marks are printed. But that incurs hyperinflation. A wheelbarrow of worthless Marks could buy a stick of butter in the morning and in the afternoon, you would need two wheelbarrows.

The destruction of Europe AFTER a World War was predicated by American bankers.

[fasttense]

5. Pay us the ransom or we shoot ourselves.

Why not let the free hand of the market fix this and let the banks collapse? I mean free market theology should be applied to the banks as well as the working class. Why should any nation's money go to hand outs for badly managed and poorly run banks?

It's about time banksters and Wall Street CEOs feel the same pain as We the People are feeling.

Join the prolonged occupation of Wall Street starting 17 Sept: http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/occupywallstreet.html

[CanonRay]

6. The banks don't have a leg to stand on

How can they ask for (another) bailout without regulatory reform. It should be reform or fold.

[bemildred]

7. Actually, killing the banks seems like the first step towards a brighter future. nt

[dixiegrrrrl]

8. Kicking this crucial issue.