Aftershocks, Part 1: That Austrian Bank

"Sometimes little things are the start of much bigger things. Probably the most famous historical example of this is the June 1914 assassination of an Austrian archduke who, it’s safe to say, 99% of the world had neither heard of nor cared about. But the aftershocks of the deed produced the biggest war in human history.

More recently, the US government’s 2008 decision to allow mid-tier investment bank Lehman Brothers to fail is frequently blamed for turning a mortgage bubble into a global financial collapse.

So in trying to understand the world it pays to look beyond the headlines to the secondary and tertiary effects of whatever is happening. And right now, more than the usual number of events and/or trends seem capable of turning a sector-specific story into a broader crisis. This series of columns will look at some of them, beginning, appropriately, with Austria, where the government has decided to “bail-in” rather than a bail out a failed bank. Already, the collateral damage is mounting:

Heta Damage Spreads in Austrian Downgrades, German Losses

(Bloomberg) — Austria’s decision to wind down Heta Asset Resolution AG sent ripples through the financial system, causing credit rating downgrades in Austria and bank losses in Germany.

Moody’s Investors Service cut the rating of Carinthia province, which guarantees 10.2 billion euros ($11.1 billion) of Heta’s debt, by four levels to Baa3 from A2, and said it may lower the ratings of three state-owned Austrian banks exposed to it. Dexia SA’s German unit, Deutsche Pfandbriefbank AG and NRW Bank said yesterday they own Heta bonds that may suffer losses.

“Notwithstanding the intention of the central government to protect taxpayers under the new banking resolution regime, Moody’s sees the steps taken so far as adding higher uncertainty to developments,” the ratings company said late Friday in a statement on the Carinthia downgrade. “Susceptibility to an adverse scenario has increased as a result.”

 at http://dollarcollapse.com/the-economy/aftershocks-part-1-that-austrian-bank/