Groundhog day: Geithner botches another bailoutShould taxpayers own the good banks?
When the Dutch bank first secured a €10 billion capital injection from the Dutch government in October 2008, it was already exploring ways to ring-fence its exposure to further potential losses on this portfolio but hadn’t developed the right methodology for this. Then came the awful results of the fourth quarter of 2008, bringing further impairments on a portfolio of illiquid securities held for sale that the bank had to mark to a distressed price in a thin market. ING lost €2 billion on the portfolio in the fourth quarter, pushing the whole group into a loss for the year of approximately €400 million and requiring it to allocate more capital against the portfolio,...
