European Bank Rescue

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

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The perception that the large banks in Europe could present as much of a financial problem as the debt of sovereign nations do has grown rapidly recently. Spain’s bailout of Bankia will cost over $23 billion by some estimates. Greek banks also expect to get aid from the government because of the write-downs they needed to take on Greece’s paper.

If Greece does leave the EU, the estimate of the costs to banks in the region have rise above $1 trillion. That amount is more than the supposed cost of salvaging Greece, Portugal, and Spain. It is not clear where the money might come from.

Many local governments cannot afford to provide the aid. In theory, the money could come from the ECB. And, less likely, the source could be the region’s bailout funds, worth over $700 billion, meant for the area’s countries. It is hard to see how a mechanism could be set up for that capital to go to banks

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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