Defuse the Dexia time bomb

Three years ago banking giant Dexia managed to avoid bankruptcy only thanks to state intervention, and ever since it has been struggling to survive. Like many other banks Dexia is a ticking time bomb, the business paper Les Echos warns: "The Dexia scandal could have been stopped three years ago. However for that to happen Belgium and France would have had to act decisively in October 2008. But they preferred to let time pass. And they weren't the only ones. Several European states made the same wager. Three years later most of these (Spanish, German, Italian ...) banks are still ailing. They survive like zombies thanks to loans from the ECB and sap the confidence of the entire European banking sector. They are ticking time bombs, and it's high time they were defused. ... Like the Greek crisis, the Dexia scandal shows us that we must act quickly otherwise the bill will be even higher later on."

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