Banks Need State Aid to Avoid Worst of Credit Crisis, Merkel Says

[FarCenter]

Chancellor Angela Merkel sought backing Sunday from skeptical Germans for a costly bank rescue plan. Berlin's bail-out package could cost German taxpayers billions of euros.

In remarks to a Sunday newspaper, Bild am Sonntag, Merkel said, "Only action by the state can restore necessary confidence now."

Before a meeting Sunday, Oct. 12, in Paris of the 15 euro zone leaders, she said that the intervention had to be internationally coordinated.

"We are not doing this for the sake of the banks but in the interests of the people," she told the mass-market Bild.

As in the United States, the German left has grumbled at a rescue likely to cost tens of billions of euros, saying it comes only a few years after a reduction in the scale of welfare handouts to the German poor.

Merkel has reiterated her opposition to a joint bail-out by the euro zone, saying each country must deal with its own troubles.

Four of the G7 nations which set out the broad direction of the plan on Friday in Washington will be represented at the 16-nation Paris summit, which will embrace Britain although the British do not use the euro currency.

...

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3706699,00.html

[BeFree]

1. So,

... government has become the solution? Reagan must be rolling over in his grave.

Ya know, being a Reagan democrat must be getting tougher and tougher these days.