Last week, the "BURSA" newspaper held a roundtable with the topic "The banking system and the sovereign debt crisis", which was attended by PhD Daniel Ionescu, lawyer Gheorghe Piperea and economic analyst Ionel Blănculescu.
The conclusion of the debates was that next year we may see major changes in the banking system.
Lawyer Gheorghe Piperea claims that there may be bankruptcies or bank nationalizations in Romania next year. In his opinion, not all the banks in the system would deserve to go bankrupt, because not all of them "did whatever they pleased". Moreover, there have been some lenders that "did their best to get Romania's economy working", according to Gheorghe Piperea.
Economics Ph. D. Daniel Ionescu claims that foreign banks will not withdraw from the local market, unless the incentives offered to risk capitals would no longer be sufficient. He said that the Romanian banking system does not include toxic assets, only non loans which can no longer be repaid.
Ionel Blănculescu, economic analyst, said that we are on the verge of panic on the financial market of the Eurozone. He said he is working on a European level project, for the management of sovereign debt, which includes the creation of a European Agency for Sovereign Debts, an agency which is subordinated to the European Commission and coordinated by the European Central Bank.
Mr. Blănculescu explained: "This agency will buy sovereign debts from banks in the Eurozone, centralize them and concentrate them and issue bonds with the equivalent value of those amounts, which will then be sold to the European Commission and the ECB. The amounts obtained from the sales to the two European institutions, would be used to capitalize the European banks, and the amounts recovered from the countries in question would be used to buy back the bonds sold to European Commission and the ECB