STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- Governments across Europe scrambled to save failing banks on Sunday, working largely on their own a day after leaders of the continent's four biggest economies called for tighter regulation and coordinated response to the global meltdown.
In Berlin, the German government held crisis talks after the collapse of a $48.4 billion bailout of Hypo Real Estate AG, the country's second biggest property lender.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Europe's biggest economy would "not allow the distress of one financial institution to distress the entire system."
The country's Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck later said it would guarantee all private savings accounts.
Merkel said no citizen should fear for the safety of their savings.
In Iceland -- particularly hard-hit by the credit crunch -- government officials and banking chiefs were discussing a possible rescue plan for the country's overstretched commercial banks.
Emphasis added by me.
I keep hearing over and over and over the quote from Space:1999:
Now we’re sitting on the biggest bomb man’s ever made.
... and now I think everyone else in charge is beginning to sense that.
And remember that the European Central Bank has so far held firm on interest rate cuts? Now that might be in the cards -- probably too late than to do anything other than sound the alarm on a crisis:
Robert Brusca, chief economist at the New York-based Fact and Opinion Economics, said that if the ECB does issue such a cut it would a be a sign "that they're really, really scared."
Emphasis added by me.
And so the impending collapse continues.
Oh, and one other thing. I thought I was King of Typos. Read this carefully!
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