Word: banking
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...more convincing still needs to be done. Financial stocks plunged on news of the bailouts, and Datastream's index of European bank stocks has now fallen by 45% in a year. Even shares of some of the biggest and seemingly most solid financial institutions such as Royal Bank of Scotland have been mauled. Some depositors have taken fright, too. A day after the U.K. Treasury announced the nationalization of Bradford & Bingley and the sale of its branches to Spain's Banco Santander, Kusum Patel, a 50-year-old chef from Ilford, a gritty commuter suburb 9 miles (14.5 km) northeast...
Fortunately, that sort of panic - which brought down British lender Northern Rock a year ago - was the exception. But the loss of confidence underlying it is every banker's worst nightmare - and every bank regulator's, too. At Bradford & Bingley, staff were given forms to hand out to customers explaining what had happened and why their money was safe. Elsewhere, it was national authorities who sought to reassure, most notably in Ireland, where the government announced an unprecedented $560 billion guarantee to cover the deposits and debts of the nation's six biggest banks for the next two years...
While calming the general public is critical, nobody has yet figured out how to deal with a fundamental cause of this crisis: banks' loss of confidence in each other. They are so nervous about so-called "counterparty risk" - the possibility of not being repaid - that they have stopped lending to one another, bringing credit markets to a grinding halt. "We know who the strong banks are, but we don't know who the strong banks are exposed to," explains Simon Maughan, banking analyst at MF Global in London. In this treacherous environment, a bank doesn't just worry about...
...troubles were exacerbated when the U.S. House of Representatives rejected a $700 billion rescue package for banks across the Atlantic on Sept. 29. For all the difficulties the Bush Administration has encountered as it tries to push through that package, there's a crucial difference between the U.S. response and the European one: in Washington, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has been working closely with Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to craft a systemic response to what has turned into a systemic crisis. In the 27-nation European Union, by comparison, there is no single bank regulator and no mechanisms by which...
...central bankers to hike interest rates, hoping to cool off overheating economies and keep a lid on rising costs. But inflation worries have eased with recent sharp declines in the prices of oil and other commodities. Now policymakers are opening the money taps again. In September China's central bank lowered its key interest rate to 7.2%, the first cut since 2002. More central banks are expected to follow. "We're going to move from monetary tightening to monetary loosening in Asia," says Manu Bhaskaran, a Singapore-based economist with the Centennial Group. "Inflation is yesterday's story...