In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re very far from being out of the 2008 crisis. The bandaids are leaking. Heavily.
Update: In an emailed statement, the German finance ministry told Bloomberg that the report on Deutsche Bank by German weekly Die Zeit “is incorrect” adding that “the federal government isn’t preparing any rescue plans. There are no grounds for such speculation.”
- GERMAN FINANCE MINISTRY DENIES DIE ZEIT REPORT ON DEUTSCHE BANK
- GERMAN GOVERNMENT ISN’T WORKING ON BANK RESCUE PLAN: MINISTRY
Only two more denials until it is unofficially confirmed.
It’s all about Deutsche Bank this morning again, where after last night’s vigorous denial by CEO John Cryan, who told Bild that the troubled German lender is not seeking a government bailout and that it’s balance sheet is solid, earlier this morning Germany’s Zeit reported that the German government is working on a contingency plan for Deutsche Bank. The German outlet writes that possible scenarios apply in case Deutsche Bank AG needed capital injection to cover litigation costs and include the option of German government taking a stake.
Contingency plan envisages possible sales of Deutsche Bank units, with the option of state guarantees to back the transactions if needed. One worst-case scenario involving the government taking a 25% stake would apply only in extreme emergency. All options are contingency planning and German govt hopes Deutsche Bank won’t need any state aid.
Queried by Reuters, a Deutsche Bank spokesman referred to an interview Chief Executive John Cryan gave German daily Bild on Wednesday and denied the report. “At no point did I ask the chancellor for support. Neither did I suggest anything like that,” had told Cryan Bild in response to a different report that said he had asked German Chancellor Angela Merkel for her support with a $14 billion U.S. demand to settle claims it missold mortgage-backed securities. Such a request would be “out of the question for us,” Cryan said, adding that he could not understand how “anyone could claim that.”
Despite the preemptive denial, Zeit said that the German government is still hoping Deutsche Bank will not need state support and only scenarios for a potential rescue are being discussed so far.
In related news, it is calculated that the insanity can last somewhere between eight and 68 months longer before it all crashes down.
The ECB and the BOJ, the two central banks most actively monetizing debt currently, have 8 and 26 months respectively, if they do no changes to their programs. However, if incremental easing is layered on, like expanding the scope of their bond buying programs or purchasing equities even more aggressively, the total rises substantially. The final answer: 68 months, or just above 5 and a half years, in the case of the ECB, were it to steamroll all political opposition and monetize virtually every possible bond (and 20% of the equity market), and 48 months, or 4 years, in the case of the BOJ.
How very strange! One would have thought those one million new immigrants would have been good for the German economy….