"(...) The crisis in Portugal also raises questions about whether the Union will come to grips with the other side of its crisis: the banks. Banks in well-off countries like Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands hold a lot of Greek, Irish and Portuguese debt. And if the weak countries cannot pay their debts, they will have to reschedule them, reduce them or default, causing a major banking crisis in the rest of Europe. That reckoning would require governments to ask their taxpayers to recapitalize the banks, which is exactly what political leaders are afraid to do. 'We have a banking crisis interwoven with a sovereign debt crisis,' Mr. Tilford [cheif economist for the Center for Economic Reform in London] said. 'Europe needs to address both, and it need to acknowledge that the banking sectors of creditor nations - especially Germany - are not now in a position to handle restructuring and default and that governments wil have to pump money into banks to recapitalize them.' In essence, Mr. Tilford said, it is the taxpayers of Greece, Ireland and Portugal who are bailing out British, French and taxpayers and depositors - not the other way around. The indebted countries are not really getting bailouts, he said, 'but loans at high interest rates'. For there to be a real bailout, he said, there would have to be a default.", edição de hoje do International Herald Tribune (página 17)
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