But there are also local scan before their doors

It is in good taste today make systematic trial of banks. It cannot, indeed, to dream better as scapegoats for all our ills in times of crisis. It is one of the rare issues on which political unanimity may be. Last head of charge: "toxic" loans that some banks were granted to municipalities and departments. From the outset, it must be recognized that many excesses have been committed and that some banks have a good share of responsibility. Departments, as the Seine-Saint-Denis, including 97 of the debt based on loans at risk! Loans "snow balls" ("snowball": it does not invent...) with the "rate" of 1.5 to 2 for three years then peaking at more than 18! Loans to small local communities indexed swaps between the pound sterling and Swiss franc! The small more soaked toxic loans than the large communes (24.9 for municipalities under 10,000 inhabitants against 18.6 to greater than 100,000)! Believed to dream! And this gives desire to ordered banks to reach the dock. So that local communities didn't really need this: debt in the amount of EUR 120 billion, they are exposed to the consequences of the removal of business tax, even that they are supposed to play a major role in the fight against the crisis and for employment.

So despite sinking in the more unfair populism and the more ineffective, should be reason keep and start by looking at the reality in the face. Structured loans account for less than 20 of the debt of the local communities. Moreover, these structured loans have, for some of them allowed municipalities to achieve substantial economies (encrypted by a single bank to more than 500 million euros between 2001 and 2008) in the past. What is manage, these are the abuse. Abuse of some municipalities who believed that "the trees rose to the sky" (especially for their successors...). Also abuse of some banks (including those who, being less well established than others, made the bid), who have forgotten to take the "duty of Council" is.

Deal with these abuses, two solutions. It should first be sorting between local communities. If it can require large municipalities and departments that they measure the risks they take, it is not so small municipalities which were "unscrupulous" high risk products without even consciousness. It would be anomalous whether local communities equipped with, and therefore the more accomplices, which, by their capacity for intervention in the media, fared the best. For local communities more fragile, the State must, one way or another, intervene and banks must make concessions. The Charter of good conduct signed on 7 December between several banks and associations of elected representatives does not everything, but it is in the right direction. But there are also local scan before their doors. Large communities, which have, in most cases, been accomplices of the providers of these "soft drugs". And all communities, to ensure that is changed the absurd comp-tables rules which apply to them. As the Court of Auditors has denounced in early 2009, they have, indeed, the obligation to assess the cost of their financial strategy or establish provisions to cover their unrealised losses. There also are believed to dream. It is also essential that local communities develop their financial expertise to avoid the trap of toxic financial products and to ensure more transparency on the part of lenders, left for the more modest of them to pool the means deployed. Hope that this crisis will finally, on these points, to restore meaning to the principle of reality...