Europe joins the bailout game

“You know you’re in trouble when you have to bail out the bailouts,” said Floyd Norris in The New York Times online, and “Europe did that twice very late Sunday night.” Following a failed summit on Saturday, Germany had to salvage a week-old bailout of its No. 2 mortgage lender, Hypo Real Estate, and the Dutch government restructured its bailout of Fortis.

Worse yet, as America’s “financial upheaval” washes "with full force on to the shores of the Old Continent,” said David Marsh in MarketWatch, Europe is falling apart. Just when it needs unity, European nations are resurrecting old “beggar-thy-neighbor polices”—Ireland, then Greece, and now Germany have guaranteed their residents’ bank deposits, and other countries are feeling pressure to match them.

Europe's governments “are having to throw the rulebook away,” said Britain’s The Guardian in an editorial. If Europe doesn’t rethink its economic model—creating a “continental banking regulator,” say—Hypo won’t be the last teetering bank.

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