Canada presses for one-trillion euro bailout fund at IMF defaults, failure, package, pressed, banks

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Canada presses for one-trillion euro bailout fund at IMF


WASHINGTON — Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney on Saturday pressed Europe to dramatically boost the size of its financial bailout fund to one trillion euros in a bid to keep troubled banks afloat and forestall calamitous defaults in debt-ridden nations.

Speaking in Washington at a weekend meeting of the International Monetary Fund, Carney warned that a failure to overwhelm the debt crisis with a massive rescue package could have serious consequences for the stability of the global economy.

“There is a need for a comprehensive resolution of this issue, the European issue,” Carney said in a roundtable interview with Canadian reporters. “In the absence of effective resolution of that … one could expect a deterioration in financial conditions globally that would have spillover effects on the major economies, including Canada.”

Carney and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty have been in the U.S. capital for a series of meetings aimed at persuading euro-zone nations to take bolder steps to stave off a debt default in Greece and limit the risk of contagion to other heavily indebted nations like Italy and Spain.

An existing 440-billion euro emergency fund — called European Financial Stability Facility — is widely viewed outside the continent as insufficient to protect against sovereign debt defaults and potential bank collapses.

Carney and Flaherty have expressed frustration over a lack of political will in the 17-nation euro zone to address the crisis.

“The complication there is we’re talking about 17 different governments,” Carney said earlier Saturday, speaking on The House on CBC Radio. “We’re also talking about the European commission and the European Central Bank, so there’s a variety of different players who have to take decisions along the same lines at the same time.”

But both men also said Saturday that they have been somewhat encouraged by statements made at the IMF and in meetings among G20 finance ministers and central bankers.

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Meanwhile, the Bank of Canada governor, for the first time, put a specific number on the desired size of a beefed-up rescue fund that will “overwhelm” the debt problems.

“You need a big pot of money to get from today to that point, which is going to be two, three years in the future, and you need it now," Carney told CBC. “What is important here, what is not being asked, what the Europeans are not discussing is a transfer of a trillion euros from one set of countries to another set of countries. It’s support for a transition, for a period of time as those countries adjust.

Canada was among several non-European countries — including the U.S. and China — that applied increasing pressure on Saturday for Europe to take swift action.

The weekend meetings began on a somewhat optimistic tone with a G20 communique that promised the world’s biggest economies would take “all necessary actions to preserve the stability of banking systems and financial markets” in the coming months.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, though, sounded a dire note Saturday about the potential consequences of inaction.

“The threat of cascading default, bank runs, and catastrophic risk must be taken off the table, as otherwise it will undermine all other efforts, both within Europe and globally,” Geithner told the IMF steering committee.

The European debt crisis represents the “most serious risk” to the global economy, Geithner said, calling for euro zone countries to put up a “firewall against further contagion.”

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Global financial markets fell to 14-month lows last week as anxiety grew about the possibility the global economy was heading into double-dip recession territory.

New York University economist Nouriel Roubini, who predicted the 2008 financial crisis and is known as Dr. Doom, said it may already be too late to prevent another global downturn.

“At this point the debate is not whether we’re going to have a double-dip recession or not. The double dip has started,” Roubini told Emerging Markets, a business news website.

Roubini expressed concern the European bailout fund “is going to run out of money” and won’t be big enough to backstop Italy and Spain, which, he said, are headed toward a crisis akin to the one in Greece.

Carney, however, said euro-zone countries have ample capacity to address the debt crisis if only they would act.

“This is a manageable situation. They have the capacity. They have the resources,” Carney said in Washington. “We are encouraged by the discussions this weekend, but in the end this will require action, not just discussions.”


If the European crisis is addressed, the global economic outlook will look “much better,” Carney said, even with persistent concerns about private sector demand in the U.S.

But “there is a danger of the handoff being fumbled,” he said, referring to the transition from post-2008 government stimulus to privately driven economic growth.

“Just to repeat, we’re not an island,” he told the CBC. “We know that we will be affected if things get worse, but we can address it. We will draw on our strengths. And what we really do think that Canadians should stay focused on is we’ve got to get more productive and we’ve got to build new markets. We’ll make sure that the financial system continues to function, regardless of what happens.”

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SEPTEMBER 24 - Canada's Central Bank Governor Mark Carney (C) talks with India's Central Bank Governor Duvvuri Subbarao (R) as they gather for a group photo with other International Monetary Fund (IMF) Governors, during the World Bank/IMF Annual Meetings in Washington.