Quote:On the 11th February the Daily Telegraph’s Brussels correspondent
Bruno Waterfield wrote an article under the header: “European banks
may need £16.3 trillion bail out, EC document warns.”

In the article, the reporter revealed that he has seen a secret document produced by the EU Commission
which briefed the union’s finance ministers on the true extent of the banking crisis. Less than 24 hours later, the
article’s header was changed to “European bank bail-out could push EU into
crisis” and two paragraphs had mysteriously disappeared. Here they
are:

Quote:“European Commission officials have estimated that “impaired assets”
may amount to 44pc of EU bank balance sheets. The Commission
estimates that so-called financial instruments in the ‘trading book’
total £12.3 trillion (13.7 trillion euros), equivalent to about 33pc of EU
bank balance sheets.

In addition, so-called ‘available for sale instruments’ worth £4trillion
(4.5 trillion euros), or 11pc of balance sheets, are also added by the
Commission to arrive at the headline figure of £16.3 trillion.”

Do yourself a favour - read those two paragraphs again. Newspaper
editors do not change content light-heartedly. Did the Telegraph editor
receive a call from Downing Street? Or Brussels? Did he have second
thoughts about the avalanche that he could possibly instigate? I don’t
know and I probably never will. But one thing is certain. If the EU
Commission’s estimate of £16.3 trillion of impaired assets is correct,
then the crisis is far worse than any of us could ever imagine. Not only
would we have to get used to the prospects of a systemic meltdown of
our banking system, but entire nations may go down as well.