How €2 Trillion became €200 Billion in just over a week!

Lets have a look at these amounts from the above headline in actual figures:

€2,000,000,000,000 has become €200,000,000,000

Difference €1,800,000,000,000

All the talk, a short while ago, was of leveraging the EFSF to create an apparent €2 trillion euros, a number plucked from thin air, presumably, as it sounded enough to fix all the combined problems of all the countries in the Euro Group.

This weekend, as Sarkozy first met IMF head Lagarde in Paris, and now moves on to Merkel, in Berlin, this evening, the number has become €200 Billion, the maximum apparently that France believes it can get its hands on for its banks, all that still remains from the shock and awe, 1 billion US dollars first announced in May 2010 in what became the EFSF.

The lower and later figure, however, is all money signed up for by the 17 Euro Group members and thus payable by their taxpayers. (Malta and Slovakia have yet to agree, but are presumably sufficiently small to eventually be bullied into granting their consent - Finland's Prime Minister and governing parties have betrayed their parliament in granting their consent, the consequences of which will presumably only become clear as the promised collateral proves worthless).

More interestingly the background chatter has changed, in spite of Fridfay's Fitch downgrades of Spain and Italy, it is the French banks that seem at the forefront of attention, after the already clearly crippled Franco/Belgian Dexia, is haltingly explained away, that is!

Yet this question has to be asked, if some French and German banks can this weekend be saved, apparently the number one priority of all the rescue packages since May 2010, what will be then done about the ever rising interest costs of Spain and Italy. In another years time, post elections, will not Europe still be on the edge of the precipice?