Global Cooperation Needed for Economic Crisis

Time to Act

On Friday night...the United States was working with other nations to stem the financial crisis and also moving ahead with plans to take equity stakes in struggling banks instead of just buying up their bad assets.

So far, governments on both sides of the Atlantic have bungled their responses. The Bush administration’s $700 billion package to buy bad assets from banks failed to convince anybody that it would solve the problem. Meanwhile, leaders in the European Union pointed fingers, squabbled over burden-sharing and made matters worse with ad-hoc actions on a national level that just pushed the problem onto their neighbors.

October 11, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/opinion/11sat1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin



EU bank bail-out plan agreed

Germany, France, Italy and a further 12 European countries have tonight unveiled a "comprehensive" plan for salvaging their banking systems from potential ruin, as panicked European leaders met to try to ward off more financial meltdown before the markets re-opened after the weekend.

The three elements - liquidity support, inter-bank lending guarantees, and recapitalisation of distressed banks - are the core of last week's Brown plan and will, with national variations to take account of differing systems, to become the European standard.

October 12 2008

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/oct/12/banking-europe