Financial Crisis pushes Europe to the brink

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article: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/130957/the_financial_crisis_pushes_europe_to_the_brink_of_disaster/

EXCERPT:

When you look at some of the numbers, you can see the time bombs that are ticking away. According to Ed Bonawitz, many countries are in deep shock: "Ireland's external debt, at $1.8 trillion, equals 900 percent of the country's $200 billion GDP. The United Kingdom's external debt of $10.5 trillion equals 456 percent of its $2.3 trillion GDP. Switzerland's external debt of $1.3 trillion equals 433 percent of its $300 billion GDP. Now that the credit markets are locked tight, renegotiating the terms of these loans is virtually impossible." U.S. banks are said to have a loan ratio of around 26-to-1, and European Banks have one that is around 60-to-1.

F. William Engdahl writes:

The problems in Eastern Europe, which are just now emerging with full force are, if you will, an indirect consequence of the libertine monetary policies of the Greenspan Fed from 2002 until 2006, the period where Wall Street's asset-backed securitization Ponzi scheme took off.

The riskiness of these Eastern European loans is now coming to light as the global economic recession in both east and west Europe is forcing Western banks to pull back, refusing to renew loans or 'rollover' the credits, leaving thousands of borrowers with unpayable loan debts. The dimension of the Eastern European emerging loan crisis pales anything yet realized …