If Europe’s bank don’t trust themselves, why would anyone else?

Quite. (ht Marginal Revolution)

The issues in Europe remain the most concerning thing for me at the moment – the US has a large drought and a weak patch, but at least we don’t have to ask if their central bank has the ability to always act as a lender of last resort.

The fact that there is no central fiscal authority in Europe, and the fact that people are unsure whether they can trust the ECB in a worst case scenario, makes matters difficult over there.

My concern for NZ comes from the same place they always do during these financial crises: will it lift the cost of funding (which is happening in part – albeit at a time when additional credit remains cheap) and lower export commodity prices (which hasn’t happened).  With a stagnant Europe NZ can do fine, but if they lose the plot we will not be left unharmed.

Update:  For future reference (as I often use these types of posts when I’m going back to look at history – it is amazing how useful blogging has been in this context), growing issues regarding German’s willingness to bail out the region (following election defeats for the incumbent) are a major driver of increasing uncertainty at this point in time.  Also note that the decision to start suing US banks now, in the middle of a crisis, isn’t particularly helpful.