Defaulting banks - where will it stop?

[Jan Klimkowski]

Bank liability to the PIIGs (Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain) - with charts per bank at the url:

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/easter-...50-billion

And now that it is pro forma common knowledge that should the PIGS fails, that at least a few domestic banks would be wiped out, it also should be appreciated why the ECB will do everything to prevent an impairment to bondholders: with just under $2.3 trillion in potential partial or full losses on total exposure, the domino effect would blow up Europe overnight, then promptly wipe out the US and the rest of the world with it.

The country with biggest exposure to the PIGS is not surprisingly Germany with $513 billion, followed by France at $410 billion, Great Britain at $370 billion, and... the US at $353 billion. As for the next two dominoes to drop, Portugal and Spain, the countries whose banks are most at risk are Spain, France and Germany for Portugal and Germany, France and the US for Spain. Which explains why the Fed is now collaborating fully with the ECB from preventing the Portugues rout from hitting Spain, and makes us wonder just how many Spanish bonds the Fed may have been buying in recent weeks. As we disclosed previously, it is certainly under the Fed's current mandate to buy Greek bonds if it chose to do so. But, as above, who really cares: everyone now knows the banker cartel is merely doing everything to delay the inevitable, day by day, with absolutely no follow through plans on what happens later. Unfortunately for the middle class it will be them, and not Ken Langone, bailing out these very same banks when the shit hits the fan once again, which it absolutely will as neither has anything changed, nor has the Fed's response of fixing bubbles with more bubbles been modified.