It's all very Wall Street 2008 these days in Europe. The US authorities claimed that the situation moved so quickly, they had little room for debate and were too focused on saving the banks to consider how they really saved the bankers and their precious lifestyle. (If you believe that line that Paulson and Geithner used, you probably believe in the Easter Bunny too.) This time, Europe has had plenty of time to see the negative impact of poor policy in the US, so hopefully lessons have been learned. Doubtful, but hey, maybe I want to believe in my own Easter Bunny who believes in fairness. The Guardian:
Some €453bn (£378bn) was lodged in the ECB's "deposit facility" on Tuesday night in a move that some analysts feared showed banks were so concerned about lending it out to rivals that they would rather earn just 0.25% in interest from the central bank. The ECB also revealed that €15bn had been used from its emergency lending facility overnight on Tuesday, following €14.8bn borrowed the previous day. Bank stocks retreated from a stronger start to the new year after the Italian bank UniCredit attempted to entice investors to back a €7.5bn cash call by offering a big discount on the existing price of its shares.
