Newspapers : EU in Financial Turmoil 10th October

Geir Haarde, profile of a prime minister. Rowena Mason, The Telegraph (en)

Gordon Brown to sue Iceland over banking crisis. Christopher Hope, James Kirkup and Jon Swaine, The Telegraph (en)
" ... Mr Brown told a press conference: "We are taking legal action against the Icelandic authorities. We are showing by our action that we stand by people who save." ..."
(Pathetic Comment for a Former Chancellor of the Exchequer who supported this way of doing business for more than 10 years)

Barclays bankers enjoy £500,000 corporate trip amid bail-out. Alastair Jamieson , The Telegraph (en)
" ... Eighty bankers are entertaining 100 clients and their partners at the 16th-century Villa D'Este in Cernobbio. Although such corporate largesse is commonplace in the investment banking industry, the timing could not have been worse for Barclays – one of the eight banks that may take a share of the government's £500bn taxpayer-funded bailout ..."

City bonuses worth £3.5bn despite financial crisis. Robert Winnett, The Telegraph (en)
" ... A number of secretive City traders are thought to have made tens of millions of pounds by betting that banking and other shares would fall this year. Regulators stepped in last month to ban short-selling - a technique used by traders to profit as shares fall in value ..."

UK and Iceland clash on crisis. Tom Braithwaite, Jim Pickard and Alex Barker, The FT (en)

" ... Geir Haarde also criticised the British government for using anti-terror laws to freeze £4bn of bank assets. “Not many governments would have taken that very kindly,” he said.
The unprecedented move – criticised by legal experts as a distortion of the law’s intent – was used to protect the deposits of British account holders ..."

Merkel’s wake-up call alarms German savers. Bertrand Benoit , The FT (en)

" ... Anecdotal evidence shows the surprise statement this week from Angela Merkel, chancellor, that all savings were safe was a wake-up call for a country that had treated the global financial crisis as a remote threat on a par with climate change or jihadist terrorism ...

... data showing an increasing demand for cash in the eurozone were the main trigger for Ms Merkel’s guarantee announcement, Stefan Olbermann, a finance ministry spokesman ... "

Nations Weigh Global Action to Crisis. Mark Landler and Edmund L Andrews, The NYT (en)

" ... The British and American plans, though far from identical, have two common elements according to officials: injection of government money into banks in return for ownership stakes and guarantees of repayment for various types of loans ...

... Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain made the case, in a letter to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, for another option gaining favor among economists — guaranteeing short- and medium-term loans between banks ... "