The news that the American Justice could reduce the fine imposed on Deutsche Bank for the subprime scandal from 14 to 5,4 billion dollars has favored the rebound on the stock market of the German giant, which, after losing up to 7%, he recovered in the finale and provisionally returned to positive territory yesterday. But speculation lurks around what the International Monetary Fund considers "the main systemic threat to global financial stability."
However, the disaster of the Deutsche Bank, which in Germany is accompanied by that of Volkswagen and Commerzbank, is not only affected by the incapacity of the management but by the unsustainable policy of double standards that the ECB Supervisory Authority, rightly criticized for its his myopia of President Mario Draghi, he practiced and practices towards Deutsche and towards Mps.
Monte dei Paschi, if it has shrunk as it has shrunk, certainly has its responsibilities and a ballast of non-performing loans, due to the nonchalant closeness to local politics, which it is only now laboriously trying to get rid of. But, with its continuous and completely questionable requests for capital increases, the Supervision of the ECB has literally massacred the Sienese bank and, instead of promoting its safety, has done everything and more than everything to bury it and complicate its rebirth.
Quite the opposite was the attitude, which defining too lenient is only a euphemistic, that the ECB Supervision has reserved for Deutsche Bank, in front of which it has repeatedly closed its eyes, as Federico Fubini acutely recalls today in the "Corriere della Sera", both on the exorbitant associated costs and on the entity of the derivatives.
"Although the German bank was already involved in 7.800 lawsuits and although the penalties would have cost it 6,8 billion in losses in 2015 and today other fines of over 5 billion are looming", the EBA did not take this into account and the ECB promoted Deutsche in the autumn 2014 stress tests. But the ECB's favorable treatment of the Germans does not end there. In the same 2014, the Single Supervisory Mechanism of the ECB "accepted the estimates of the Deutsche Bank as regards the value of a portfolio of derivatives whose gross weight is 42 trillion (15 years, Germany's annual income", despite knew around that those estimates were based on arbitrary internal models that led to "improper evaluations" and completely misleading.
It is no coincidence that, despite passing the ECB's benevolent stress tests, the Deutsche Bank failed the parallel tests of the New York Federal Reserve for two years, which keeps it under control because 15% of the German bank's balance sheet depends on its American businesses. The Americans don't trust Deutsche Bank's financial statements and the Stock Exchange has drawn the consequences, but, given the incredible difference in treatment reserved for Deutsche and MPS, in Europe it is the ECB's supervision that can no longer be trusted. Too many children and stepchildren.
