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U.S. Banks Tally Their Exposure to Europe’s Debt Maelstrom
After a hurricane, homeowners check nervously to see if their insurance will cover all of their damages. With the European financial crisis still threatening a trail of defaults, United States banks are betting that their insurance is going to pay out.
Five large American banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, have more than $80 billion of exposure to Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece, the most economically stressed nations in the euro currency zone, according to a New York Times analysis of the banks’ financial disclosures.
But these banks have made extensive use of a type of financial insurance, called credit-default swaps, to help them offset any losses that might occur if defaults swamped the five troubled nations. Using these swaps, along with other measures, the five banks have cut their theoretical exposure to the troubled countries by $30 billion, to $50 billion. The analysis also shows that Citigroup has the greatest percentage of its exposure potentially protected at 47 percent, while Bank of America has bought the least protection at 12 percent.
- By Gus Leonisky at 30 Jan 2012 - 7:29pm
- Gus Leonisky's blog
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basebal bat
Talking to senior journalists confirmed my theory that the US has been trying to break up Europe since day one... But this view does not make it into the media headlines nor even the "opinion" pages, where opinions are only about bashing Julia, not the yanks — especially on the subject of their empireoleum. Sure, one can talk about the US dollar being in the dumps, as long as the Euro gets into the gutter. By no means one is allowed to tell the truth about the way the US has actually interfered with European countries to sink the European Community.
The US in general and in particular loathe Europe for whatever reason, but mostly for being there and resenting the patronising Yankee attitude, the cads. One thing for sure (I am repeating myself big time here) is that the US has been trying hard to break up the Franco-Germanic alliance. The US do it — very subtly but overtly...
Had I been Europe I would have looked at all the pros and cons of the situation, eventually telling the US bank to take a bath, and come back when they had cleaned their butts — and especially make sure to create a compromising situation that would make Goldman Sachs shiver. Not hard if you have the willy.