Quotations

_ – About saving the nations and the markets
_ – About the credibility of risk management agencies
_ – About a small detailAbout saving the nations and the markets

It was not a nice scene to watch the group of European leaders locked one Sunday afternoon to close a deal before the Stock Exchange opened. It was a bit of the caricature of the liberal financial system. It seems that in order to save the peoples, as with the Greek case, nobody is capable of coming to an agreement. But when the stock exchanges and the markets are at stake, they all do. That is why the bailout plan for Greece was late, done with many doubts and its delay caused those doubts to be now installed in Portugal and Spain. Greece needed a plan, clear-cut, but I do not know if as drastic because if this plan triggers a social crisis, it will be of no use.

Martine Aubry

About the credibility of risk management agencies

In a recent parliamentary commission, former employees of S&P and Moody’s reported that Wall Street companies would press them to rate the controversial packets based on sub prime mortgages with the highest possible rate. Otherwise, these companies threatened them with going to a rival firm to obtain that rating, and this would translate into an income loss for the rating agency.

Sandro Pozzi, El País, Spain

About a small detail

In order to calm down the taxpayers’ increasing rage, some of the most subsidized sectors try to suggest the idea that, in fact, this was only about a loan and that the money will be returned. “We have paid in full and with interests”, says nowadays the smiling president of General Motors in an announcement broadcast by the main TV chains. The Detroit giant has returned 6.7 billion dollars to the American and Canadian governments, 5 years earlier than promised. The company forgets a small detail though: the automobile firm has only returned the loans it has been granted. But it has not returned a single cent of the 45 billion dollars the State injected and for which it received 61 per cent of the capital, forcing the American taxpayer to be its main stakeholder; nor has it apologized to the creditors whom it forced to accept significant debt releases, or the millions of shareholders it ruined or the workers it fired.

Ramón Muñoz, El País, Spain