August 14, 2007 (LPAC) – This morning the ECB pumped extra money into the market, in the range of 7.7 billion euros – their fourth intervention since last Thursday (which brings the total intervention volume to almost 212 billion euros). "After the greed, fear reigns" headlined an article in the Wiesbadener Kurier today, which was echoed in numerous other German news dailies.

Among bankers, fear couples with a deep embarrassment over the failure of the leading institutions to act competently: "Where are the governments?," and "where is the BAFIN?," an article in the German Die Welt daily today reports. Die Welt's cry for help is in reference to financial market watchdog head Jochen Sanio, who 10 days ago spoke of a banking crisis resembling that of 1931, before taking off for several weeks of vacationing in the forests of Canada.

One banking analyst in Frankfurt said to EIR News Service today that there is utmost urgency now to discuss how to get out of the trap of these allegedly "creative instruments" that have proven to be not only risky, but also destructive, and we can't just rely on the ECB for emergency interventions like those in the past three trading days.

He said that figures like Alan Greenspan belong to the past, and indeed, Deutsche Bank's hiring him as a chief consultant, has provoked a lot of mockery among banking people in Frankfurt. The fact that Deutsche Bank hired Greenspan reveals the disorientation among the top echelons of the banks, the analyst said. After all, the bankers have either been totally uninformed or too incompetent to see what the risks of Greenspan's "instruments" have been, so no solution should be expected to come from these same bankers.