Hey, Europe!

[Jerome Scuggs]

Your Turn!

In other news: did you know that the bailout will allow banks to hold a minimum of $0 in their reserves? Talk about encouraging.

[Nycle]

Sucks for them, taking in ABN AMRO was too much for them to chew on in light of the credit crisis that followed.

The credit crisis wasn't the main cause for this to happen though. Although Fortis did have stakes in the American subprime mortgage market this was mainly caused by short selling and thus having speculators purposely spreading rumours to drive down the exchange rate of Fortis' stocks only to buy them back at a discount and take the profit later. This resulted in a total loss of confidence and 70% of Fortis' value evaporated since the start of this year.

Yet another "ultra"-capitalistic abomination caused by a few people's greed at the expense of many and markets that were underregulated.

[Zerzera]

Talking about a self fulfilling prophecy.

[Da1andonly]

benelux :greedy:

[Nycle]

benelux :greedy:

Given Fortis' status as a cross-border operating bank, I'm just glad that this partial bailout could be decided upon so quickly by the Benelux governments in the hopes of restoring confidence. Although Europe likes to call itself a single market, when it comes to things like these it's harder to do damage control when differences on national levels arise.

I think it would be interesting to see if, let's say, an Anglo-French bank (if it existed) could achieve the same amount of damage control in a short period of time when confronted with a similar situation.

Europe's financial regulators are still scattered over national levels while a lot of banks operate cross-border, I think this shows we are in need of an (EU)-wide regulator or a stronger financial coordination mechanism between national regulators to handle this kind of stuff better. We're way behind the infamous flexibility of the US.

[Zerzera]

At least those few retarded conservatives on this forum finally find out why we care about their politicians/presidents.

[Galleleo]

First off all, Fortis took over ABN AMRO with some Scottish bank and another one. A guy I know is an Economist and works for a different bank in the Netherlands and he said this take over is the biggest financial mistake of this century (a century not even 10 years old). That cost Fortis a lot. The price they paid for it cost them a lot of problems because their stocks went down, and part of the financing was to be done by way of stocks.

Then the crisis in the US started and Fortis is one of the banks in the Netherlands suffering from that crisis, that + the short-selling Nycle mentioned is what brought Fortis down. Now our governments could have let it die like the US with with Lehmann & (brothers?), but it would have resulted in a domino effect, so this safe, for our economies, is the best solution.

Besides, for the Dutch government this means a 4 billion Euro expense, while we are not trillions of Euros in debt.

[Zeebu]

i will jsut put it here:

fail

[Jerome Scuggs]

Now our governments could have let it die like the US with with Lehmann & (brothers?), but it would have resulted in a domino effect, so this safe, for our economies, is the best solution.

Oh, you mean this domino effect?

If this doesn't re-ignite the Lisbon Treaty talks... I'll be thoroughly impressed.

[Cops]

I'll agree with Zerz to some extent, countries have a huge stake in how America does economically as well as the result of the next federal election.

[Money]

i like how the unites states 700 billion dollar bailout was REJECTED

[Liquid Blue]

It'll go back up for another vote on Weds. or Thursday, with a few lines changed. It mainly got rejected because the congressmen who were up for re-election soon didn't want their jobs jeopardized by voting for the bill and having their states be up in arms against them. Even McCain's state didn't support the bill.


Student and Car loans are going to start to get tight and people are going to start losing their jobs with the credit freezing up.

Quick question for anyone who knows- I heard on the radio that corporations payrolls are also in danger, because they get the money for payroll through credit or something, I'm not exactly sure. Can anyone inform me how exactly payroll will be affected through the amount of credit being loaned out shrinking as we speak? Or is it not as big of a hit to payroll at all?

[Jerome Scuggs]

pretty clever

get congress to reject the bailout... but then have the fed do it anyways

cause the nine other central banks - and the european economy - to slide downhill

and then be like "see?! the american dollar is gaining strength!"

[Liquid Blue]

Student and Car loans are going to start to get tight and people are going to start losing their jobs with the credit freezing up.

Quick question for anyone who knows- I heard on the radio that corporations payrolls are also in danger, because they get the money for payroll through credit or something, I'm not exactly sure. Can anyone inform me how exactly payroll will be affected through the amount of credit being loaned out shrinking as we speak? Or is it not as big of a hit to payroll at all?

I found out the answer to my question on another forum-

"no bailout => credit is frozen for the next several months => companies can't borrow money or refiance debt => many companies go out of business/cut jobs => people lose jobs and stop spending their money => more companies go out of business/cut jobs => millions of people simultaneously say "oh poo poo" and choose either to 1. sell their stock or 2. not buy any more => no demand for stocks => price has to drop to find a buyer"

that's not good.

[Flub]

Yo I have some money on that bank!
not that much though and it should get refunded.