European governments to help rescue European and U.S. banks
After being in Alaska the past week, I have a rudimentary but legit appreciation for how a minority of Alaskans could want to secede from the U.S. The main grievance of secessionists there is that the Lower 48 has too much control over Alaska’s resources. Well, how are they going to feel now that the banking system is being bailed out not just by the federal government but by European governments?
I hope to post a bunch of short posts over the next week about the honeymoon and generally about things in the news I’ve missed. But as a Democrat with libertarian leanings, I can really only begin to imagine what free-marketers (not to be confused at all with modern conservatives) think about this story:
After a weekend of crisis talks on both sides of the Atlantic, European nations and the United States unveiled on Monday a staggering and coordinated series of multibillion-dollar rescue packages to shore up teetering banks and guarantee credit to free up lending between them.
While the broad outlines of some of the deals represented a concerted response to plummeting stock markets and frozen credit markets, the leading European economies also embraced some individual steps, underlining the differences of approach they have sought to bury in the face of the worst financial crisis of the post-war era.
On Sunday, European leaders agreed to act at a national level from what officials called a “toolbox” of measures fitting their individual requirements.
“The time of everyone moving alone is over,” President Nicolas Sarkozy of France told a news conference in Paris.
Don’t get me wrong, this has to happen. But the number of things allowed to go wrong in the market because of a mish-mash of regulation and non-regulation (or willful ignorance) is dispiriting to anyone who thinks markets should work with no government involvement whatsoever.
