Banking bailouts, but not as we know them

It would be nice, most important people in Europe will agree, if the euro zone's banking sector could manage to hold itself together for the next 10 years or so.

By then, the banking union that has caused policymakers so much angst and sleeplessness in recent times should be firmly up and running, and ready to deal with any capital crisis that might emerge. Or at least that’s the plan. Hopefully. Fingers crossed.

The Single Resolution Mechanism that emerged at the end of the usual “marathon” and “late-night” negotiations on Thursday has some strengths. The philosophy behind it, whereby sovereign governments are no longer on the hook for their failed banks just because of geographical coincidence, is most welcome, particularly in light of the Irish experience. The mutuality aspect of the system is also positive, in that it provides an overt statement of us all being part of a team rather than being part of a team until something goes wrong. Thus, we all contribute to a big pot of cash that can be used to “resolve” a failed euro zone bank, regardless of where that bank may be located.

Some comfort can be drawn too from the promised speed of the resolution process – it is designed to be implemented over the course of a single weekend, so that a failed bank on Friday can be presented as a resolved back to markets on Monday morning.

This all sounds great and everybody, presumably, wants it to work. There is an argument however that the hard-won, compromise-laden nature of this week’s agreement means that it has already lost some of its potential effectiveness.

Take the weekend resolution period, for example. This might seem more achievable if it didn’t require at least 100 separate votes within various groupings to occur over the period.

There is also the eight years it will take to fully establish and fund the mechanism, with the first proper step towards this unlikely to be taken until next year at the earliest, well after the ECB’s forthcoming stress tests are completed.

And perhaps most crucially, there is the size of the fund. At full flight, it is designed to reach €55 billion ( plus potential borrowings), a lot of money in most circumstances but not in all, as the funders of the Republic’s €64 billion banking bailout will be only too aware.

But we all know what a poorly designed creature that was and how the rest of Europe has (hopefully) since learned how to do much, much better in future.