While a lot of noise was being made about the american bailout, the German parliament has hastily approved a 480 billion euro (approx. $650 billion) rescue plan for the financial sector, even though there is not as much of a mess as in the USA., (but the economy sure seems to be slowing down to a crawl) Most of the money is for lending guarantees for banks and some of the money may be spent on buying up risky assets. A major difference seems to be that banks participating in the plan will have to obey government conditions on executive pay, directions on lending, more government oversight etc.
At the same time the german government does not seem inclined to help bailout the beleagured carmakers in the auto sector.
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Iceland had won "the best country to live in" last year, when the stock markets were booming and icelandic companies were bent on acquisition ventures around the world . But this year Iceland seems to be the first country to be in a complete mess due to credit crunch. It started off with problems in some of the bigger banks in Iceland. You have to remember that bank assets in Iceland were unnaturally large (around nine times the annual GDP) . The banks had been operating in many other countries besides Iceland following the deregulation in the 1990's . Some of the city councils in England had lots of money invested in the Icelandic banks!! These banks were also financing a lot of deals in Britain. With liquidity drying up in the global markets , the huge icelandic banks were unable to refinance the big loans they had given out. England went to the extent of threatening seizing some of the assets of icelandic the banks in england The government /central bank of iceland stepped in and took control of some of the huge banks.
This led to the stock market declining by around 77% { The benchmark ICEX from around 2300 to 700 } and the icelandic currency "krona" has lost most of its value. Icelandic officials are looking for loans from Russia to tide over the crisis and might have to make some sort of adjustments using its oil gas exploration/rights. Iceland imports a lot of food articles and the fall of the krona is having inflationary effects.Suppliers to icelandic importers may have started to cut down on credit because the importers may find it hard to find forex. with lack of clarity on the exchange rate.
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The US government is persuading nine banks to accept $125 billion of government investment.But there is no guarantee of any of the money being used in such a way to ease the liquidity crunch as the government does not seem keen on getting any control of the management side of the bank to dictate how the money is to be spent, as the treasury is not seeking voting stocks for the money it is investing
There seems to be a good chance of at least some banks just hoarding the cash to shore up their balance sheets and the fed may not be able to do anything about it.
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It seems that the U.S. government/treasury is getting ready to buy an ownership stake in a broad array of American banks. This seems to be for the first time since the last great depression . According to the treasury secretary, this "program would be designed to encourage the raising of new private capital to complement public capital". But it seems that they only wants to buy nonvoting shares . It seems thata broad intervention might represent a vote of no-confidence in the entire banking industry and not just some troubled institutions. Hopefully at least some strings regarding compensation of top executives could be attached to the buy , but I very much doubt if that will happen. Earlier, Britain had also started a sort of partial nationalization of its troubled banks by allowing them cash in exchange for stakes in the banks.
