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...European governments can certainly talk the talk of coordination. Following a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in Berlin yesterday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, "We both agree that Europeans of course need to display a coherent course of action." President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, which currently holds the rotating E.U. presidency, read on television a common statement from all 27 members pledging to adopt "all necessary measures to protect the stability of the financial system...
...movement toward international coordination. On Monday Germany reaffirmed its determination not to participate in France's plan for a Europe-wide bank bailout plan, modeled on the U.S.'s $700 billion effort. Without Germany's participation, no such plan can proceed. "The Chancellor and I reject a European shield," German Social Democrat Finance Minister Peer Steinbruck told German radio on Monday in reference to the plan, "because we as Germans do not want to pay into a big pot where we do not have control and where we do not know where German money might be used...
...German officials say the guarantee was necessary to shore up confidence, not least because Germans hold a higher proportion of their savings in banks than citizens in many industrialized nations - and they still harbor a deep collective memory of the perils of economic uncertainty from the interwar years of the Weimar Republic. "We had to do it," says Reinhard Schmidt, a professor of international banking and finance at Goethe University in Frankfurt. "I have friends. I have neighbors. I have family. You wouldn't believe how many people have been calling me to ask about their deposits. The fears...
...much for European unity. Less than 24 hours after leaders of the European Union's four largest countries gathered in Paris Saturday to pledge a collective defense in the global financial crisis, the strategy crumbled in the face of a still worsening credit crisis in Europe's banks. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, faced with the breakdown of a government-brokered deal with German banks to save one of Germany's biggest mortgage lenders, announced that all German bank deposits would be guaranteed by the government, causing consternation and anger among her European neighbors, many of whom felt compelled to follow...
...fact had little standing to do so. By Sunday, the national governments in the 27-member E.U., including the 15 that use the euro currency, all seemed concerned first and foremost with the conditions of their own imperiled banks. Nowhere more than in Germany, where the Finance Ministry enjoined German banks to double their commitments to bail out troubled mortgage giant Hypo Real Estate AG. A rescue deal that was hailed last week at a total cost of $48 billion had crumbled; now it is pegged at a minimum $69 billion, $21 billion of that from state coffers. Some analysts...