Which country has the resources to bail out its banks?

A comment in Barrons todays gives a little perspective!

“While the U.S. has the resources to bail out its financial institutions, the same may not be said for many other governments,” says Jonathan Golub, a former Bear Stearns strategist who now runs his own firm, Golub Market Insights. Belgium’s short-term bank liabilities are roughly 285% of its gross domestic product, while the figure is 260% for Switzerland, 156% for Great Britain and 60% for France and Germany — versus 15% for the U.S.

Credit default swaps (CDS) are a type of insurance on debt securities and the pricing of these swaps builds in a forward looking market view of the risk of default. A piece in Baseline Scenario notes the the price of CDS swaps are back up to mid-October levels.

This entry was posted on 7. March 2009 at 17:50 and is filed under Investments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.