German, Italian Banks Tumble: Is Collapse Close Behind?

By William F. Jasper

“Deutsche Bank: World’s most dangerous bank?” That’s the headline of an article yesterday by BBC business editor Simon Jack.

“Deutsche Bank shares hit a new record low today. Its value has halved since the beginning of the year,” notes Mr. Jack. “So is it now the most dangerous bank in the world? According to the International Monetary Fund — yes.”

“Last week, the IMF said that, of the banks big enough to bring the financial system crashing down, Deutsche Bank was the riskiest,” The BBC editor goes on to note. “Not only that, Deutsche Bank’s US unit was one of only two of 33 big banks to fail tests of financial strength set by the US central bank earlier this year.”

Similar stories abound in the financial press. “Deutsche Bank to Initiate the Next Financial Crisis? Stock Could Be Headed to Zero,” warns Chris Vermeulen at TheStreet.com. “If you thought Lehman Brothers was bad, you should watch Deutsche Bank. There are similarities that will scare you,” Vermeulen says in his subtitle.

Since the Brexit vote in Britain on June 23, we have been seeing and hearing many dire warnings that the global economic system is facing another “Lehman Brothers moment,” referring to the September 2008 filing for bankruptcy by Lehman Brothers bank, the event that is credited with revealing the extent of the subprime mortgage exposure and initiating the global financial crisis.

DeutscheBank

“Remember Lehman Brothers and the chaos that it created when it failed?” asks Vermeulen. “If you think that the World’s Central Banks are now wiser and consequently will not allow another similar event to occur, think again,” he says. “We will not only see a repeat of this occurrence, but it could be exponentially larger than Lehman’s was.”

The fact that Deutsche Bank is at the center of the current meltdown will come as no surprise to those who follow ZeroHedge.com, where Tyler Durden has been exposing the Frankfurt-based German financial giant’s derivatives scams for years. (See, for instance, “The Elephant In The Room: Deutsche Bank’s $75 Trillion In Derivatives Is 20 Times Greater Than German GDP” from April 2014, and “At $72.8 Trillion, Presenting The Bank With The Biggest Derivative Exposure In The World” from April 2013.)

Deutsche Bank, of course, is not the only “Too-Big-To-Fail” (TBTF) bank involved in this global fraud scheme; it is merely leading the pack. Vying with Deutsche Bank for attention now are the Italian banks, led by Banco Monte dei Paschi di Siena (BMPS), the legendary “oldest bank in the world,” which traces its lineage back to 1472.

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