The World Bank engages on the Euro crisis

The Post‘s Howard Schneider reports here on modest steps by the World Bank to help insulate eastern Europe’s banks from the Euro crisis: The World Bank is committing $27 billion to keep nations in eastern Europe and central Asia from bearing the brunt of a European banking crisis, the bank announced Wednesday. The action echoes ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

The Post's Howard Schneider reports here on modest steps by the World Bank to help insulate eastern Europe's banks from the Euro crisis:

The Post‘s Howard Schneider reports here on modest steps by the World Bank to help insulate eastern Europe’s banks from the Euro crisis:

The World Bank is committing $27 billion to keep nations in eastern Europe and central Asia from bearing the brunt of a European banking crisis, the bank announced Wednesday.

The action echoes the steps the bank took during the 2008 world financial meltdown and reflects the rising anxiety that the euro zone’s troubles are beginning to reverberate outside the region.

This time, the money is intended to help prop up the European banking system and avoid a retreat from outside investment by western European banks. Those institutions are struggling under new banking rules and the threat of recession to strengthen their position at home, stoking fears that eastern Europe will be the next victim of the euro’s troubles and that the crisis will quickly spread across the globe.

In the overall multilateral response to the Euro crisis, the Bank is a bit player, but it’s telling that it feels compelled to devote resources to the response.

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

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