In the bankingsector, non-performing loans are reachingworryinglevelsinsomemember states, especially inCyprus, Greece, andItaly, casting doubts over the resilience ofEurope's banking sector.
According to the Bank of England's analysis, if every single one of those countries went bust and wrote off 50% of their sovereign debt, banking debt and non-bank private-sector debt, that would wipe out around half the capital in the UK banking system - which is another way of saying that, in theory, the majority of our banks would limp on.
It was a feat Morgan and his crew would repeat across the industrial landscape, arranging new equilibrium conditions and regulatory mechanisms in one sector after the other, filling in for a non-existent central banking function (the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, marking the start of a whole new story).