Twenty large European banks had cross-border exposures exceeding their entire core capital

Evidence

As Standard & Poor’s put it, “We estimate that about 20 large systemically important European banks have cross border exposures to creditors in peripheral countries that far exceed their own tier one core capital.” — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 796

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the austerity literature’s argument that banks, not sovereigns, were the real exposure problem in the Eurozone crisis — relevant to Mattei and other crisis accounts. — connects to: European banks are too big for any single government to bail out — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 37; Core-country banks bought peripheral sovereign debt and levered up more than US banks — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 37; German banks were exposed indirectly through Austrian lending to Eastern Europe — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 154 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Eurozone banking integration outpaced national resolution, producing too-big-to-bail systemic risk #corroborates (0.88) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 227
• European banks were too large for any national sovereign to rescue #expands (0.82) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 231
• European bank exposure to periphery sovereign debt reached dangerous multiples of national GDP #expands (0.78) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 239