Europe to Semi-Nationalize Banks - Will US Follow?

Perhaps it's appropriate that it is on Columbus Day that the Old World appears to be getting into gear. All I can say is wow. What a day in Europe.

In what can only be described as a veritable financial earthquake, the UK nationized its main banks, the Eurozone unveiled a massive bank bailout plan, and even Poland said it will have a plan in place to inject funds into banks. Across Europe, banks are going to be partly nationalized. And the US could shortly follow suit. Who would have thought they'd see the day?

After much angst over the past week over the EU's inability to come up with a coordinated plan, this morning an emergency summit of the 15 countries in the eurozone (the countries that use the euro), the governments afreed to offer guarantees for the troubled banks, commiting the national goverments to use public money to make sure no European bank is allowed to fail. The market responded well to the news. European trading closed up by the end of the day, and the euro jumped 1.1 percent against the dollar.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown even stopped by to join the leaders in a show of good fath, even though the UK isn't on the euro. But even before he went, Brown had outlined specifics this morning on the plan for the UK to use public funds to bail out the ailing banks, as announced last week. This morning it was revealed that the UK would undertake a partial nationalization of the British banking system, with the government taking a majority share in Royal Bank of Scotland and Halifax Bank. Continental Europe will soon follow suit. This afternoon each government, from France to Germany to Portugal to the Netherlands, all announced the massive amounts of money they will each make available to buy stakes in their banks. It's a truly stunning development.

And just now Polish government officials said that that country is also coming up with a plan to partially nationalize its banks through funding. This may be an indication that tomorrow, when all 27 EU countries meet in Brussels, the non-Eurozone EU countries will sign on to the plan.

So is this the unified European plan that the markets wanted? Sarkozy was presenting it that way this morning, saying, "This is indeed a common action that we are taking." But the agreement is only a framework, with each government taking steps at a national level according to its own interpretation of what should be done. So far, for today at least, this seems to have been enough coordination to calm the markets, both in the US and Europe. But will it last?

Apparently the US Fed will meet tomorow and iron out the final arrangements for bank funding, and it is thought they may come up with a plan similiar to that announced today in Europe, where the US government would take controlling stakes in American banks. It is expected that if the 27 EU countries do reach a consensus tomorrow on the bank partial nationalization plan, they will also tomorrow recomend that the US follow suit. If the US follows the recomendation, it will be truly amazing. To think that this week the US could follow Europe's lead toward economic nationalization shows just how rapidly things are changing before out eyes. But right now it's anybody's guess what the US will announce tomorrow.

The long and short of all this? I am now a banking customer of the UK government. Amazing.

Britain follows with UK Bailout Plan

Those in the US who thought the $700 billion bailout package passed by the congress last Friday was extremely unusual might be reassured by seeing another bailout unveiled across the pond - a £500 billion ($870 billion) plan for the UK. But importantly, the British bailout plan is entirely different from its counterpart in the US. Here's why.

For starters, the £500 billion figure being used by the British media this morning is a bit misleading. Though all $700 billion of the US package will be coming directly from taxpayers, only £50 billion ($87 billion) of the UK plan is coming from taxpayers money. That part of the plan will be used by the government to partially buy out failing UK banks. This is where the plan differs significantly from the one in the US. The $500bn US taxpayer-funded bailout package will be used to buy the bad debt from the ailing financial institutions to clear up their balance sheets. The £50bn UK taxpayer-funded bailout package will be used by the government to buy partial ownership in failing UK high street banks, the banks most people use to store their savings.

Additionally, because of the differences between the US presidential system and the UK parliamentary system, there is no doubt as to whether this bailout plan will become reality. It's definitely happening.

So where is the £500 billion figure coming from? Some news outlets have decided to include the other part of the plan, half of which is theoretical money being made available and the other half of which is just a larger injection than normal by the Bank of England into the money markets, in the headline. £200 billion will be coming from the Bank of England under its existing Special Liquidity Scheme. The Bank of England always injects money into banks under this scheme, although now it will be putting in much more money much faster. Additionally, the Government is making £250 billion "available" for banks to guarantee medium-term debt in a bid to encourage banks to start lending to each other again, although so far the banks have said they won't use it.

Brown said that the £50 billion investment by the taxpayers will yield a return on the investment, as is being claimed in the US. Like in the US, Brown seemed to be throwing the financial philosophy of the ruling government (in this case New Labour) out the window in order to urge the new plan. "This is not a time for conventional thinking or outdated dogma but for the fresh and innovative intervention that gets to the heart of the problem," he said this morning. This language perhaps struck more than a few people as unusual this morning, as that "outdated dogma" was developed and followed by Brown himself when he was chancellor under Tony Blair. Such quick philosophical rethinking echoes the language that has been being used in the US about the Anglo-Saxon model of free-market capitalism.

The two men said the government had been working on this plan for weeks, but has chosen to unveil it now because of the market meltdown which took place yesterday, in which the high street banks plummeted on the UK stock markets. My bank, for instance, lost 40 percent of its value in the course of yesterday, making me feel quite nervous about my savings. This morning's announcement seems to have had a small rallying effect on the UK markets - for now.

European Plan?

So now that the UK has become the first EU country to come up with its own bailout package unilaterally, does this mean any talk of a pan-European bailout fund is dead in the water? Not necessarily, said Brown. The prime minister also announced that the UK has put forward ideas this morning for a pan-European funding plan. Yet he still ruled out extending the UK's savings account guarantee to cover all deposits, even as other European nations are scrambling to do so.

The fact that Brown didn't have much else to say about a pan-European response probably means that coordinated action is unlikely, which may mean that his announcement does little to calm the European markets in the long run. The market turmoil over the past two days was largely in response to the fact that the EU seems to have disintegrated in response to the economic crisis, with each member nation taking drastic unilateral steps which seem to conflict with one another. As Swedish finance minister Anders Borg told reporters in Luxembourg yesterday, "One country's solution is another country's problem.'' Though Brown's announcement this morning may temporarily calm the British markets, it may send the continental European markets into even more turmoil, and by tomorrow the beneficial effect of the announcement for UK trading could be overtaken by continues fears about the lack of a coordinated Europe-wide response.

Merkel Goes it Alone?

The British media is reeling today from the surprise announcement from Angela Merkel yesterday that Germany would institute a full private bank savings guarantee, a decision which seemed to directly contradict what Merkel committed to on Saturday at the emergency summit in Paris. Though the leaders seemed to jointly criticize Ireland's decision last week to unilaterally guarantee all the money in its private banks without consulting the EU, Merkel has gone ahead and done exactly that for Germany the next day. It would now appear the question of whether there will be a cohesive EU-level response to the economic crisis is back on the table, and Saturday's meeting has been rendered irrelevent.

There is still great confusion over whether Merkel was just making a vague political commitment or an actual change i policy, but the news has thrown European governments for a loop. The fear in the UK is that if other EU countries are allowed to guarantee the full savings in private bank accounts (whereas the UK only guarantees 50,000 pounds - raised from 35,000 last week), it will mark an unfair competitive advantage for them and UK consumers will rush to move their money into foreign banks. Germany's decision has embolden other EU countries to do the same thing. Denmark shortly followed suit, and Greece has also stepped in to guarantee ts banks. Today Iceland is considering the same thing, and the Spanish government just announced that if there is no joint EU action, it will also act unilaterally to guarantee Spanish banks.

Given that Germany is Europe's largest economy, the decision by Merkel means that it is inevitable that all European countries will have to guarnatee the entire amount of its citizens' savings in private banks. Given that reality, many in the UK today were concluding that the only solution is a pan-European bailout fund. Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg told the Independent today that he supports a pan-European system of deposit guarantees. But how will British and German taxpayers feel about the idea of using their money to bail out Italian or Greek banks? They probably wouldn't be too enthused. But considering the fact that it is the Northern European banks that are collapsing at the moment, perhaps now is not the time for geographic snobbery.

Incidentally, there is increasing chatter that the current crisis could be exactly the bad medicine Europe needs to get its act together and put realy momentum behind the unification project, convincing EU citizens of the real, practical need for a stronger EU that can deal with such emergencies. In today's Brussels Blog, the Financial Times quotes one EU diplomat as saying today that the current emergency could have the same effect as the 1992 crisis in the European exchange mechanism has in, in the long run, consolidating support behind a single European currency. Similarly, the FT points out, it took the 9/11 terrorist attacks to prompt EU leaders into agreeing, at a summit just three months later, on the principle of a European arrest warrant.

The collapse of a big cross-border European financial institution could be just around the corner, and if this were to occur, no serious economist would be able to argue that rescuing the company is the responsibility of only the country in which that company happens to have its headquarters. But so far European national governments have been very resistant to the idea of creating a pan-European regulatory system.

European finance ministers are meeting tonight, and from the turmoil today it's clear that the market is hungry for some signal of a cohesive coordinated EU response. But with each country appearing to be unilaterally going forward and doing its own thing, it seems unlikely any such strong signal will emerge.

Verdict Is In: Europe will Respond Nationally

It looks like the question I posed in yesterday's post has been answered. In a press conference just now over at the Elysee Palace, the leaders of the European countries in the G8 laid out a very general plan for dealing with the crisis in Europe, after meeting all day to figure out what to do. And the verdict in, Europe will go forward with reforms on a national level, and there will be little in the way of a EU-wide policy. Sarkozy had reportedly been seeking an EU bailout fund similiar to the one just passed in the US, but apparently Angela Merkel was very opposed to any such plan. So European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso announced that the EU will temporarily relax its competition rules to allow individual countries to undetake sweeping changes such as Ireland's decision last week to guarantee deposits in Irish banks.

So in the end, it appears the leaders decided the EU was just not ready to deal with a crisis of this magnitude. They said that the response by individual EU nations would be "coordinated," but they were short on details of what that might mean. At the same time, they were very specific about what they will be calling for when they meet with the wider G8.

Europe's Economic Solution: National or Federal?

As the US Congress debates today over the new version of the bailout bill, Europe is also scrambling to come up with solutions to the crisis which, although not of their making, has come to their shores. Despite overconfident assurances even recently that Europe would be immune to the American economic plague, it is clear now that the old world will be affected and there is consensus - unlike in the US - that drastic government action will be needed. But who should take the action? Right now the big debate raging is this: should there be a coordinated EU-level effort to deal with the crisis, or should each country deal with it in their own way tailored to their own situation?

It is not a simple question, and goes well beyond traditional euroskeptic/eurofederalist divisions. With the way the EU is currently set up (and while it still runs on the pre-Lisbon Treaty system), it would likely not be able to act quickly enough for any kind of big pan-European action like the US's bailout bill. But on the other hand, if each county just does it's own thing it could result in chaos and conflicting actions, particularly for the countries within the Eurozone that use the same curency and are regulated by the European Central Bank.

The pitfalls with the 'every man for yourself' plan were already seen earlier this week when Ireland went ahead unilaterally in implementing a savings guarantee program for its banks (similiar to the FDIC in the US) without notifying Brussels. The EU was not too pleased about that, but Irish politicians said that consulting Brussels would have taken too long and the government needed to act quickly. However right after they did it other European countries, most notably the UK, filed objections, saying it gave Irish banks an unfair advantage over other ones. Many Irish banks operate in the UK and it is thought consumers might rush to move their money into UK-based Irish banks because their savings guarantee is higher.

On the other hand, other European governments have banded together to take action. Fortis received its bailout from a coalition of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, and France, Belgium and Luxembourg together bailed out Dexia. And there's been plenty of other activity, reflected in this chart from McLatchy-Tribune above.

The sense of urgency aroud this issue has grown incredibly strong as new data suggests that a recession could be near in Europe's major economies. French President Nicolas Sarkozyis holding a summit tomorrow here in Paris with the other European members of the Group of Eight (UK, Germany and Italy) to reach some consensus on the reforms that are needed. The idea is that they should present a united Europan front when they meet with the larger Group of Eight shortly. But some other EU countries are not too happy about being left out of this meeting, most notably Spain which now has a larger economy than Italy but is not in the G8.

Already the EU has laid out the regualtory changes it is going to make to improve supervision over European banks that operate internationally, but this won't do anything to bail out banks and other financial companies that may fail in the coming weeks. One of these future changes, for instance, will be a requirement that people who sell loan packages must hold at least 5 percent of the investment.

However this works out, one thing is clear. This is new territory for the EU. Of course, globally this situation is quite new and is on a scale that hasn't been seen since the 1930's. But in Europe in particular, there are new institutions and new relationships that haven't been tested like this before. Will the EU be able to deal with the crisis effectively? Or will the magnitude of the problem be too much for the fledgling international body to handle, and will the solutions have to fall primarily on the national governments?

Europe speculates on end of US 'Empire'

Watching the live coverage of the US house floor Monday night in Paris was a truly surreal experience. On my cable system I get both French and British news station, and every station from both countries was carrying live minute-by-minute coverage of the vote on the bailout package, waiting in suspense and watching the vote tally. When the bill didn't pass, there was absolute panic over here. The news anchors were absolutely shocked, as were the commentators.

It really underlined how much the European economy still depends on the American economy. As Angela Merkel pointed out yesterday, this crisis is a problem created by the United States, and the United States is the only one who can solve it. So Europe is now in the position of having to sit back and wait for the United States to take some action as it reels from a painful crisis that is not of its own making. As the saying goes, when America sneezes, the world catches a cold. But what happens when America refuses to take any medicine?