The crash of 2002

Following a Dutch World Cup soccer victory against Germany in 2002 the Dutch are emboldened to walk out of European economic and monetary union.

Implausible? Perhaps. But Rabobank researcher Bernard Walschots says that prudent banks, stress-testing their future portfolios against low-probability event risk, shouldn’t exclude the possibility of an Emu bust-up either soon after January 1999 or some years on.

Emu could look less rosy to the next generation of politicians, driven by a discontented electorate. But the Maastricht Treaty doesn’t provide an exit route, Walschots told delegates at Euromoney’s International Bond Congress in London.