> the numbers there. The EU should be even a slightly bigger economy than
> the US and the EIB is smaller than one American bank. I'm not saying
It's smaller than the biggest American bank of all. But you have to remember that the banking system in the EU is already heavily state-influenced; around half of all the bank assets in Germany, for example, are owned by state-owned banks or savings associations. I just read an excellent book on recent changes in Germany's banking system, "Finance Capitalism Unveiled" by Richard Deeg (University of Michigan Press, 1999), which sorts thru the literature and concludes that while the big German banks are going global, the banking system as a whole is becoming more tied to small and medium-size biz than ever before. Regions like Baden-Wurttemberg continue to maintain sophisticated developmental states which invest heavily in R & D, worker training, etc. There's no sign that the state banking sector, in other words, is adopting the Anglo-Saxon bubble-nomics. I'd guess (but can't prove) that something similar is true for France, Benelux and Italy; any LBOers know of good studies on the public banking sector in these countries?
-- Dennis