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States, not the federal government, regulated securities markets and insurance, leaving little oversight for interstate business.

The 1930s New Deal reforms added more agencies, including the Securities Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, complicating political oversight by giving them distinctive missions,

Yet, it was the trust companies, lacking access to emergency liquidity that caused the 1907 crisis to erupt and spread to the banks.

the ECB’s direct authority is more encompassing.

The ECB will not be directly involved in crisis management and bank resolution, which will be the responsibility of the national authorities. This autonomy will not be incentive compatible until EU directives are adopted for a unified deposit insurance system and a funded single resolution authority.

In the case of driving schools, the government offers only a limited number of exams each year, and these are doled out to the driving schools depending on their success rate the year before. That fact alone gives the old guard a virtual monopoly,

calling for an overhaul of the written test, which he says goes far beyond making sure that a person knows the rules of the road.

Some studies have concluded that the French are probably paying 20 percent more than they should for the services they get from regulated professions, which include notaries, lawyers, bailiffs, ambulance drivers, court clerks, driving instructors and more.

barriers to getting a license are so high that about one million French people, who should have licenses, have never been able to get them.

Mr. Kramarz said that it often costs 3,000 euros, or about $3,900, to get a license. But others said the average was closer to 1,500 to 2,000 euros.

Although students are required to take only 20 hours of driving lessons, most end up doing double that while they wait for a chance to take the test.

“The current rules can be very easily gamed,”

thinks that regulators would be better off to seek simplicity through measures like leverage ratios, rather than allow banks to make calculations that depend on thousands of estimates to determine how much capital they need.

And here’s the thing: Since that aid came with few strings — in particular, no major banks were nationalized even though some clearly wouldn’t have survived without government help — there’s every incentive for bankers to engage in a repeat performance.

Unfortunately, often supervisors in charge of the failing entity in the years of the debt run up were the ones charged with uncovering the problems.

Spain was the leader in the introduction of a dynamic provision – a provisioning tool that forces banks to increase provisions without reference to any specific loan. The intention of this tool was twofold: to mitigate the bad times, and to cool the booms in the good times (Holmstrom and Tirole 1997). Dynamic provisions were endorsed as part of the Basel III standards in December 2010, in part on the strength of Spain’s experience. And indeed the existing evidence (Jiménez et al. 2012) shows that the tool worked as intended, dampening the credit boom and softening somewhat the credit crunch. However, it is clear by now that their level was not nearly enough, as their size – 3% of GDP at their highest point (2004) – was simply not of a magnitude commensurate with the credit losses.

Without the provisions, the reality of the cajas' accounts would have become much faster a concern, and would have imposed itself on the regulator

Had the Banco de España ordered an audit of the system after uncovering numerous irregularities in CCM, it would have not been able to deal with the capital shortfalls uncovered as there was no appropriate resolution regime in Spain at the time

More systematic evidence of the role played by these governance issues is provided in a 2009 paper (Cuñat and Garicano 2009b) where we showed that cajas with chief executives who had no previous banking experience (!), no graduate education, and were politically connected did substantially worse in the run up to the crisis (granting more real estate developer loan, up to half of the entire loan book in some instances) and during the crisis (with higher NPLs).

Despite the international standing of Deutsche Bank, Germany’s banking system is fragile. Several German banks required government support during the financial crisis. Highly fragmented (in part due to heavy government involvement) and with low profitability, German banks, especially the German Länder (state) owned Landsbanks, face problems. They have large exposures to European sovereign debt, real estate and structured securities.

Prior to 2005, the Landesbanken were able to borrow cheaply, relying on the guarantee of the state governments. The EU ruled these guarantees amounted to subsidies. Before the abolition of the guarantees, the Landesbanks issued large amounts of state-guaranteed loans which mature by December 2015.

While it insists on other countries reducing public debt, German debt levels are high—around 81% of GDP. The Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank, has stated that public debt levels will remain above 60% (the level stipulated by European treaties) for many years.

Germany’s greatest vulnerability is its financial exposures from the current crisis. German exposure to Europe, especially the troubled peripheral economies, is large.

German banks had exposures of around US$500 billion to the debt issues of peripheral nations. While the levels have been reduced, it remains substantial, especially when direct exposures to banks in these countries and indirect exposures via the global financial system are considered. The reduction in risk held by private banks has been offset by the increase in exposure of the German state, which assumed some of this exposure.

For example, the exposure of the ECB to Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy is euro 918 billion as of April 2012. This exposure is also rising rapidly, especially driven by capital flight out of these countries.

Germany is now caught in a trap. Irrespective of the resolution of the debt crisis, Germany will suffer significant losses on its exposure – it will be the biggest loser.

But the largest single direct German exposure is the Bundesbank’s over euro 700 billion current exposure under the TARGET2 (Trans-European Automated Real-time Gross Settlement Express Transfer System) to other central banks in the Eurozone.

In late May 2012, French President Francois Hollande provided a curious argument in support of eurozone bonds: “Is it acceptable that some sovereigns can borrow at 6% and others at zero in the same monetary union?”

Political will for integration

In the peripheral economies, continued withdrawal of deposits from national banks (a rational choice given currency and confiscation risk) may necessitate either a Europe wide deposit guarantee system or further funding of banks.

A credible deposit insurance scheme would have to cover household deposits (say up to euro 100,000), which is around 72% of all deposits, in the peripheral countries. This would entail an insurance scheme for around euro 1.3 trillion of deposits.

Given that the Spanish Economy Ministry reports that euro 184 billion in loans to developers are “problematic,” the additional recapitalization needs of Spain’s banks may be as high as euro 200-300 billion in additional funds (20-30% of GDP)

A Greek default would result in losses to Germany of up to around euro 90 billion. Germany’s potential losses increase rapidly as more countries default or leave the eurozone.

Austerity or default will force many European economies into recession for a prolonged period. German exports will be affected given Europe is around 60% of its market, including around 40% within the eurozone. In case of a break-up of the euro, estimates of German growth range from -1% to below -10%. It is worth remembering that the German economy fell in size by around 5% in 2008, the worst result since the Second World War, mainly on the back of declining exports.

For example, Greece owes about euro 400 billion to private bondholders but increasingly to public bodies, such as the IMF and ECB, mainly due to the bailouts. If Greece walks away as some political parties have threatened, then the fallout for the lenders, such as Germany, are potentially calamitous.

Once the artificial boom ends, voters will discover they were betrayed by Germany’s pro-European political elite. There will be an electoral revolt and, as in the rest of Europe, a strong challenge from radical political forces with unpredictable consequences.

by Satyajit Das

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi acknowledged as he cut interest rates last week that the north-south disconnect was making it more difficult to run a single monetary policy.

If a southern country were to default or leave the euro, they contend, Germany would be left with an astronomical bill, far beyond its theoretical limit of 211 billion euros liability for euro zone bailout funds.

"The problem is that at the time of a sovereign debt crisis, large portions of a national balance sheet may suddenly flee to the ECB's books, possibly overwhelming the capacity of a bailout fund to absorb the entire hit," he wrote in 2010,

national regulators in some EU countries are moving quietly to try to reduce their home banks' exposure to such an eventuality. The ECB itself last week set a limit on the amount of state-backed bank bonds that banks could use as collateral in its lending operations.

In one high-profile case, Germany's financial regulator Bafin ordered HypoVereinsbank (HVB), the German subsidiary of UniCredit, to curb transfers to its parent bank in Italy last year, people familiar with the case said.

In any case, common supervision without joint deposit insurance may be insufficient to reverse capital flight.

It has also delayed new energy investments and is planning to close almost a quarter of its fossil fuel power plants,

European energy companies, struggling to respond to weak demand in a flatlining economy, say they need guaranteed pricing to keep open unprofitable plants or to invest in new ones.

Their revenue is being hit by dwindling demand for electricity and by new wind and solar projects that undercut the price of the energy produced from many fossil fuel plants.

At the same time, record-low prices on carbon emissions trading markets, which were introduced to encourage clean and efficient energy production and use, have perversely become a disincentive to investment.

Many of the Continent’s aging power stations, particularly those that burn highly polluting coal, are earmarked for closure by 2020 to meet stringent local environment regulations.

Without these investments, industrial companies in Europe may face higher energy prices when local economies eventually recover,

“Energy utilities are facing a perfect storm,”

In a bid to generate 20 percent of the European Union’s electricity from renewable sources by 2020, Germany, Spain and other E.U. countries have provided hefty subsidies to wind and solar farms, which now constitute a sizable minority of daily electricity generation, often surpassing the 20 percent target.

Policy makers are debating a system of support payments to keep uneconomic power plants open,

“Without long-term signals of energy prices, investment won’t happen.”

Some analysts also expect domestic regulators to eventually create financial incentives for companies

He dryly notes that Germany couldn’t even force its own savings banks to join its national deposit-insurance scheme.

Each country in the euro has its own bankruptcy code

Putting the European Central Bank (ECB) in charge of the region’s biggest banks should end the cosy relationship between banks and regulators that allowed Irish and Spanish banks to keep lending during property bubbles and the likes of Deutsche Bank to run with so little capital. If the ECB proves itself an effective supervisor

without ready access to a pot of money to fill these holes, the ECB could be reluctant to force banks to come clean. “It is madness to expose capital shortfalls if you don’t know where new capital is going to come from,” says one bank supervisor.

“If you wanted to challenge a decision, where would you go to court?” asks the head of a European bank regulator.

“He’s helping us think about what is one of the greatest challenges of our time, how to deal with what feel like friendly monopolists,” said Tim Wu, a Columbia Law School professor who studies Internet policy and antitrust. “Amazon, Google and the others give us all this stuff for free or lower prices, so we love them, but are they dangerous in ways we don’t always see?”

In the 2002 paper with Jean-Charles Rochet, Mr. Tirole defined two-sided markets, or markets that “get both sides on board” by charging more to one set of customers in order to increase demand by others.

In the tech industry, it explains why Google, Facebook and Twitter offer their services free – the more people who use them, the more advertisers they can attract. Likewise, Amazon lowered the price of its new phone to 99 cents in part because smartphones succeed when they have a lot of apps – and developers won’t want to build apps for Amazon’s phone unless a lot of people are using it.

For regulators, tech companies have been a riddle in part because they do not follow the behavior of typical monopolies: Many do not charge for their products, and companies that offer entirely different products are nonetheless competitors. For instance, Google’s chairman, Eric Schmidt, argued in a speech on Monday that Google’s biggest competitor in search is Amazon and in mobile is Facebook — even though neither one is a search engine.

For consumers, the costs include absorbing advertisers’ ad spending by paying more for their products, being tracked and shown personalized ads, and giving up privacy.

our end-users do not internalize the impact of their purchase on the other side of the market.”

In France, the leader of the far-right National Front, Marine Le Pen, recently acknowledged that her party had received a loan for 9 million euros, or about $11 million, from a Kremlin-linked bank.

Faced with punishing sanctions, a petro-economy pushed to the brink by plunging oil prices and the wildly gyrating value of the ruble, Mr. Putin this month halted the project.

Geological surveys suggested that Bulgaria could be sitting atop an underground ocean of natural gas, enough to be self-sufficient for years, enough to eclipse the advantages of South Stream.

On April 4, 2014, soon after Mr. Putin annexed Crimea, Bulgaria’s Parliament gave initial passage to a bill that effectively exempted South Stream from a number of European Union regulations, most important, the one that would have forced Gazprom to allow non-Russian gas to flow through the pipeline.

“If I hear one more word about competition, I’m going to freeze your you-know-whats off,” Mr. Putin reportedly shouted.

The anti-fracking movement became so broad that in January 2012, Parliament banned not only the extraction of shale gas, but even exploration that would quantify the country’s reserves.

When the Bulgarian government refused, the European Union cut off tens of millions of euros in regional development funds.

In desperate need of the European funds, the prime minister announced the next day that South Stream would be halted until it had full European Union approval.

While “he overreached, and he underestimated the response” to his intervention in Ukraine, said Mr. Gray, the former American diplomat, the Russian leader has been “quite effective” in countries like Bulgaria.“He won a great deal by getting Nabucco stopped,” Mr. Gray said. “Ultimately, his goal is to keep as much control over the former parts of the Soviet empire as possible.”

Banks have so little loss-absorbing capacity that they stand permanently on the edge of disaster.

The eurozone must either make the industry far more robust, by hugely increasing equity capital, or consolidate fiscal capacity and tighten regulation, to ensure adequate eurozone-wide oversight and fiscal support.

cross-border banking through foreign subsidiaries has been beneficial for investors, and for home and host countries alike – nowhere more so than in emerging Central and Eastern Europe, still the most important export market for the eurozone.

Along with institutional reforms at the European level – particularly the creation of the European Systemic Risk Board and the European Banking Authority – regulation and supervision have been reinforced in subsidiaries’ host countries.

Then and now, monetary policy could not persuade frightened people to spend and invest.

The second Keynesian lesson was the need for some international structure to balance surplus and deficit nations.

Europe has responded to the crisis with the very British approach of muddling through, but King predicts it won’t work. Creating a true federal union, while an admirable goal, will be the work of a hundred years; the only quick way for countries to adjust is the breakup of the euro zone. King thinks the euro zone must confront the basic choice between accepting a transfer union or changing the membership of the monetary union. “Muddling through” isn’t a serious option.

The banking union that is required is the one Germany will not accept: central regulation and supervision, a common restructuring fund and common deposit insurance. It would take years to create.

With interest rates on 10-year government bonds over 6 per cent, neither Italy nor Spain can sustain their membership in the eurozone. This is what Mario Monti and Mariano Rajoy should have made clear to Angela Merkel at the summit.

The message I took away from the summit is that the eurozone will not resolve the crisis. In that sense, it was indeed a “historic” meeting.