European leaders agreed on Friday to police thousands of eurozone banks beginning next year as they sought to create much-needed jobs in their austerity-battered economies.
By the close of a two-day summit, France and Germany had patched up differences over how to beat the debt crisis, with the new watchdog for 6,000 banks a key condition for allowing a dedicated rescue fund to re-float troubled lenders.
Leaders cited “significant progress” on a 120 billion euro (US$155 billion) package of measures to try to kickstart a climb out of recession as social and political unrest hits Spain as well as Greece.
However, the bank deal appeared to come too late for Spanish lenders, who need recapitalization to the tune of some 40 billion euros that Madrid had hoped would not be added to its public debt burden for fear of sparking new pressures on money markets.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters that direct recapitalization by the eurozone rescue fund could not be retroactive, that it “will only be possible for the future.”
Fellow hardliners the Netherlands and Finland adopted the same view when finance ministers from the three states met last month in Helsinki, seemingly reversing plans carefully laid down by the eurozone in June.
France is still pleading for the “Helsinki” trio to come round.
A top EU official speaking anonymously after the summit ended said Paris has concerns about spillover effects from Spain, and maintained Merkel’s remark came as “a surprise” as the 27 EU bloc leaders “did not settle this.”
This official said the Spanish bank bailout could benefit from some direct recapitalization later in the process, once the watchdog is up and running — supposed to be later next year.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy faces growing political problems with a general strike called for Nov. 14 and key elections in the autonomous Basque Country yesterday and independence-minded Catalonia next month.
Rajoy said the direct aspect of recapitalization was not an “urgent” issue for Spain, while talk of sovereign aid — expected to take the form of a credit line initially — also remains on the back-burner.
With market pressures considerably eased since the summer, the fresh commitment bird’s eye bank supervision led by the European Central Bank (ECB) is supposed to anchor a re-designed economic and monetary union.
Leaders are beginning to believe — after three years in full crisis mode — that the euro can be made more attractive to influential EU states still outside the currency bloc like Poland, one of the bloc’s strongest economies.
After an 11-hour session into the wee hours to reach the bank supervision deal, Merkel said it was about ensuring a “solid legal framework” as the ECB puts in place “hundreds” of staff.
The target date here is Jan. 1 next year, Merkel citing a need for “democratic legitimacy,” including a change to voting rights to assuage concerns in non-euro territories where eurozone banks operate, namely the global financial center of London.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
RSS