CREDIT CRUNCH FALLOUT: Germans Fear Meltdown of Financial System

[Purveyor]

Germany and other industrialized nations are desperately trying to brace themselves against the threat of a collapse of the global financial system. The crisis has now taken its toll on the German economy, where the weak dollar is putting jobs in jeopardy and the credit crunch is paralyzing many businesses.

The Bundesbank, Germany's central bank, doesn't like to see its employees working too late, and it expects even senior staff members to be headed home by 8 p.m. On weekends, employees seeking to escape the confines of their own homes are required to sign in at the front desk and are accompanied to their own desks by a security guard. Sensitive documents are kept in safes in many offices, and a portion of Germany's gold reserves is stored behind meter-thick, reinforced concrete walls in the basement of a nearby building. In this environment, working overtime is considered a security risk.

But the ordinary working day has been in disarray in recent weeks at the Bundesbank headquarters building, a gray, concrete box in Frankfurt's Ginnheim neighborhood, where the crisis on international financial markets has many employees working late, even on weekends.

Last Sunday, most of the atypical activity was taking place on the 12th floor, which houses the senior management offices. Bundesbank President Axel Weber was repeatedly in touch -- both by telephone and via videoconferencing -- with his US counterpart, Federal Reserve ("Fed") Chairman Ben Bernanke, as well as with the heads of the central banks of other key industrialized nations. And, of course, with German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück.

Bernanke told Weber about his organization's failed attempt that Sunday to orchestrate a last-minute bailout for the battered investment bank Bear Stearns. The venerable New York-based company, Bernanke argued, was simply too big to be allowed to go under, and the consequences of such a failure would be incalculable.

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http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,543588,00.html