Will Banks Take Massive Debt Write-Offs In Europe?

With 11 European nations in Recession and most European economies contracting, as people are thrown out of work and small businesses are closing, will austerity fall further on the people or will the banks be forced to share in the pain by taking massive debt write-offs?

I believe the banks and some other financial institutions around the globe will be forced to take massive write-offs because nations such as Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain don't have the money to pay their debts. And increasingly, their people are taking to the streets in protest. In Spain yesterday, for example, an estimated one million people took to the streets in protest. And the protests are spreading.

As their economies continue to fall, their capacity to important foreign goods or to loan money to other nations in need will fall as well. The sooner these problems are finally addressed, and write-offs taken, the sooner these problems will be solved.

Dick
To learn more, please see "On May Day, Europeans Vent Over Austerity," The Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304050304577377281097956366.html