French superfund to aid financial companies hit by the global liquidity crunch could be launched within days, reports the FTâs French partner paper, Les Echos. Five leading French banks are working on creating a fund to buy asset-backed securities held by banks, insurers and others, ensuring liquidity for asset management funds if holders seek to sell. The project, developed by BNP Paribas, Société Générale, Calyon (the investment banking arm of Crédit Agricole SA), Natixis and HSBC France, comes after several managers were obliged to temporarily freeze such funds in late summer as pressure by investors to withdraw funds mounted. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/fd9f0916-99...c.html&_i_referer=http://ftalphaville.ft.com/
do i get all this right? the main banks get rid of their losing positions, park them off their balance sheet and this vehicle mysteriously turns market loss into neutral? are our governments truly backing this nonsense? do we have now a new form of public debt? where government allows banks to turn red into black? and the bank CEOs get their bonuses? is it the case that governments throw away their policies regarding banks, their minimum reserves, their financial standing, because their are too many of them in the same trouble at the same time? do they think we are nuts? (well, that was more a rethoric one ...)
i lost my illusion on the way banks mark their books long time ago, but this is a new dimension. this is public fraud. this is betraying each and every taypayer, since in the end it is them.
You mean the kind of leadership BNP Paribas showed by suspending the two "subprime" funds back in August ?
The french have lost a lot of money in our sub-prime mortgage fiasco, we got greedy and told everyone that it will be okay. So you could say that we screwed them over. Should we get mad if they screw us??? Yes, unless its a hot french chick......but we shouldn't be surprised. Financial crisis is only a disguised opportunity in a world of global economy.