April 7, 2008 (LPAC) With no "lender of last resort" facility under the European Union agreements, the central banks, finance ministers and regulators in the EU nations have decided to create "cross-border stability groups" to handle banking crises involving banks which operate in multiple European nations. The plan, which was apparently proposed by British Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling. EU finance commissioner Charles McCreevy told the Financial Times: "You have to ask how we would have handled a situation like IKB or Northern Rock if they had been operating in several countries and the answer is that we couldn't have done it."

Helga Zepp LaRouche commented that the issue of cross-border crises is one of the unresolved central issues in the debate on the ECB. It is already outrageous to use taxpayers' money to save a bank in one country without firewall, but there is no legal basis for using taxpayers' money of one country to bailout banks in another country.

The German national government and three Bundesländer (states) have already put 16 billion euros into the state-owned banks Sachsen LB, WestLB, Bayern LB and IKB, and Bayern LB today announced an additional 2 billion euros in losses, half of which will be paid for by the state of Bavaria. The bill to date is 625 euro for each citizen of the state of Sachsen; 209 euros per citizen in North-Rhien Westfalia; 192 euro (so far) for Bayern; and 88 euro for every German citizen.