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>The British and Dutch, for their part, should never have allowed a bank to take deposits from their citizens without forcing it to participate in their own deposit guarantee schemes.<

But after Iceland was a member of the EEA, other governments had no input in that. Eu-member or in this case EEA member and your banks can operate everywhere. meanwhile they are still regulated and deposit-insured by their national states. And that, as as Iceland and up to a point Ireland shows, is a problem.

And once you have opened for savers out of other EU-countries, they are as senior as your domestic savers and you have to treat both the same way.          

by IM on Tue Feb 8th, 2011 at 10:05:17 AM EST
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Eu-member or in this case EEA member and your banks can operate everywhere. meanwhile they are still regulated and deposit-insured by their national states.

As Iceland demonstrates, that is a bad rule.

and up to a point Ireland shows, is a problem.

No depositors have so far been in danger in Ireland - only bondholders who should lose their shirts.

And once you have opened for savers out of other EU-countries, they are as senior as your domestic savers and you have to treat both the same way.

No, they really shouldn't.

The British depositors can still petition their own government for restitution. Since the British government is more likely to cover British depositors than Icelandic depositors, the Icelandic government is justified in giving domestic depositors preferential treatment.

Management and bondholders should, of course, lose their shirts no matter their nationality.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Feb 9th, 2011 at 01:07:01 AM EST
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Wikipedia: Deposit guarantee in the Icesave dispute
The Directive imposes a minimum guarantee of €20,000 per depositor; moves to increase this minimum to €50,000 or even higher had been agreed politically before the Icelandic crisis, but had not been incorporated into EU law, much less into EEA law. The Tryggingarsjóður guarantees 1.7 million krónur on the basis of a fixed euro-króna exchange rate, equivalent to €20,887.[62] The Netherlands and the UK have higher guarantee levels, €100,000 and £50,000 (approx. €60,000) respectively; Landsbanki was a member of the Dutch and British compensation schemes for the purposes of guaranteeing this difference in cover, an arrangement known in Britain as the "passport system",[66] and commonly used by banks throughout the EEA. In addition, the UK Treasury has exceptionally guaranteed retail deposits in excess of £50,000 which were held in Icelandic-owned banks in the UK at the time of the crisis, at a cost of some £1.4 billion (€1.7bn).


Keynesianism is intellectually hard, as evidenced by the inability of many trained economists to get it - Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Feb 9th, 2011 at 02:18:29 AM EST
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