June 30, 2012

A European banking union should not discriminate between European sovereigns.

Sir, in “One small step for European mankind” June 30, you subtitled it with “The lethal sovereign-bank embrace begins to be pried loose”. 

Hold it there, not so fast, the most lethal part of that sovereign-bank embrace, is that which allows banks to leverage much more its equity when lending to a sovereign perceived as “safe” than when lending to one perceived as “risky”… something which neither sounds much compatible with having a European banking union. 

If those regulations are not changed, they will only doom all the European banks to end up with dangerous obese exposures to the last perceived safe haven in Europe, probably Germany.