A Special Report on the Financial Crisis

Welcome to my Special Report on the Financial Crisis

by Sharon Bowles MEP

By now it's clear to all of us that there are bad financial times ahead, with both the UK and the Eurozone caught up in recession. Our situation today is the most perilous for generations, and there are a lot of lessons to be learned for policymakers and those in the financial sector alike. We have to make preparations now for the future so that the lessons of this crisis do not go unheeded.

As a member of the European Parliament's Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, I am very involved with many of the key issues surrounding this crisis, such as capital requirements, deposit guarantees, and the fate of investors in the case of bank failures.

In this three-page Special Report I have tried to lay out the history and root causes of the Financial Crisis as comprehensively as I can, and to show what we in the European Parliament are doing now. Ultimately, because they hold the purse strings, rescue packages are the responsibility of the national governments of member states such as the UK. They are also responsible for structuring national superivisory authorities like the FSA. But the legislation governing financial institutions originates with us in Europe, so it's our responsibility to get it right.

Part 1: How it all started.

Part 2: Everything Gets Worse.

Part 3: What Europe does now.