Ireland Prepares to Open Books as EU Weighs Help for Banks
By - Nov 17, 2010 9:22 AM GMT-0200
European Union and International Monetary Fund experts will start scanning the books of Ireland’s debt-laden banks tomorrow in Dublin in a prelude to a possible aid package to stem Europe’s widening fiscal crisis.
Finance chiefs from the 16-country euro area said the joint assessment will determine whether Ireland can patch up the banking system on its own or needs to fall back on the EU-IMF 750 billion-euro ($1 trillion) rescue fund.
“If banking problems are too big for this small country to manage, Europe has made it clear they’ll help,” Irish Finance Minister Brian Lenihan told state broadcaster RTE today as meetings of European finance ministers wrapped up in Brussels.
As Europe struggled to present a united front to maintain its fiscal credibility, Britain said it would back support for Ireland, abandoning a hands-off policy toward the euro region to prevent Irish bank woes from spilling over into the U.K. market.
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Comment: Politicians and the technocrats of the international institutions love crisis management, yet they almost often fail in the most important field: to establish and maintain high-order systems those which would require minimal ad hoc interference. What we get is the contrary: low-order system that require a maximum amount of ad hoc interference. After all the fragility of the syems that are put in place is the rason d'être of politics.
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