EU to Measure Financial Effects of Biz Bailouts

(CN) – The European Union’s statistical agency has decided to keep track of bailout funds provided by the state and the financial consequences of those state interventions.

“Three aspects of the crisis have raised particular challenges for statisticians – the uncertainty over asset values, the difficulty in measuring risks which public bodies are taking on, and the rapid development of new forms of intervention,” said a Eurostat press release, but the release did not specify any further the type of information sought.     But it appears that the office wants to keep track of the financial effect of state intervention in business enterprises, an effect which has so far seemed extremely hard to quantify, in the United States and elsewhere.     That information, while not in itself political, is likely to have political ramifications, giving arguments to either those who think the bail outs are necessary or to those who think that failings banks and businesses should be allowed to die.