Europe Races to Shore Up Banks as Crisis Spreads

Most of Europe is now trying to shore up all of its assets while the financial crisis looms over the international markets. Germany is putting a blanket guarantee over its consumer bank deposits, the guarantee was to shore up public confidence showing that the German government would step up in case the already existing deposit plan weren't able to fully compensate the citizens; they arranged a bailout for their largest property lender; and Belgium and Luxembourg arranged for a French lender to take over the operations of one of its biggest financial institutions. Italy launched an emergency capital increase by its banking giant to combat the crisis.

All of these measures came a day after the four largest countries in Europe met in Paris and pledged to protect their financial system. The governments in these European countries are trying to ensure confidence in their citizens that everything is going to be fine in their economies.

However, unlike the U.S. with the multibillion dollar bailout plan, the European countries have abandoned any proposals for unified rules for coping with the crisis because it would be too hard to govern that type of policy. So instead, France, Italy, Germany, and the U.K. have decided to keep each other informed about their policies and actions with regards to bailouts.