One Danish Bank Collapse, Who's Next?

"Danish bank Roskilde Bank said on Friday it had requested and received 750 million Danish crowns ($158 million) in liquidity guarantees from Denmark's central bank, sending its shares down more than 50 percent.

Roskilde said it had realised it would have to take significantly bigger writedowns than expected in real estate loans and had put itself up for sale. The amount of writedowns was not disclosed.

The central bank said it consulted with the government, the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority and the Danish Bankers' Associations to get their support before offering the guarantee."

Danish bank are now being hit...it doesn't come at a surprise, after all their housing market is one that show the biggest bubble characteristics.

Now in Finland, let's not forget that Sampo an ex-Finnish bank has been bought by Danske Bank. Most probably a move that was required in order to absorbs more savings basically more capital...or would it be the next one to fall??

I would not be surprised to see a Finnish Bank or two, sometime next year to fall, a small one, maybe Aktia, Tapiola or others...You have to understand that the housing market should have slowdown or even fallen in 2003 but instead it carried its way up thanks to an exceptionnaly low interest rates or let's call an amazingly high policy central bank mistake.

Now, one need to sort out this mess. it's automatic with free markets through its boom and bust cycles..but this time we are seeing a lot more interventionism, especially in the US : Institution Bail-out, tax rebate etc ... the consequence are therefore unknown, the "wizards" are experimenting in an unknown field in a similar situation as the one passes the knot: for the best or the worse...

It's worth to note that U.K. "Nothern Rock" bank was nationalized after depositor run last year, it's now the turn of IndyMac BanCorp, a mortgage lender that is being taken over, today, by the U.S. regulators after a similar bank run. So the financial crisis that started last year seem to show no sign of abating, on the contrary it seems to get worse and out of control....

"U.S. banking regulators swooped in to seize mortgage lender IndyMac Bancorp Inc on Friday after withdrawals by panicked depositors led to the third-largest banking failure in U.S. history"