Big Trouble for U.S.? Europe's Banking Crisis Moves Closer to a Lehman Brothers Moment

The recent euro summit did nothing to alleviate the problems that created the crisis in the first place.

July 2, 2012

The recent euro summit in Brussels was supposed to make things better for the European economy. And if you listen to the mainstream press spin, you hear that a growing Mediterranean alliance, led by France's new president, Francois Hollande, Spain's Mariano Rajoy and Italy's Mario Monti, forced Germany to cave. We are led to believe that Germany has capitulated on things like less fiscal austerity, the sharing of debt, and direct recapitalization for ailing banks through the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). We are also supposed to accept at face value the claim that the European Union as a whole will work toward some form of common deposit insurance to arrest the prevailing bank run.

This is all bunk. But why does that matter to you? Well, recall for an instance what happened to the global economy when Lehman Brothers went bust in 2008. The world’s entire credit system froze up. Now consider the implications for the U.S. if the currency union in the world’s largest economic bloc was to blow apart. Do you think the fallout might wind up in your backyard?  Economist Simon Johnson recently gave a warning on the impact on U.S. banks in the event of a dissolution of the euro:  READ MORE