Panic selling in France

Here's The Wall Street Journal Article That Has Everyone In Europe Freaked Out This Morning

Joe Weisenthal 

Business Insider

Sep. 13, 2011, 5:46 AM 

Evidently the heavy selling in French banks this morning can be (partially) attributed to this WSJ opinion piece.

'We can no longer borrow dollars. U.S. money-market funds are not lending to us anymore," a bank executive for BNP Paribas, who declines to be named, told me last week. "Since we don't have access to dollars anymore, we're creating a market in euros. This is a first. . . . We hope it will work, otherwise the downward spiral will be hell. We will no longer be trusted at all and no one will lend to us anymore."

That line -- "We can no longer borrow in dollars" -- is what got people freaked out, prompting the bank to issue a denial, saying it CAN still borrow in dollars (despite well known funding issues and money-market retrenchment).

Meanwhile, there are comments out from Merkel today basically telling everyone to choose their words more carefully when talking about the crisis.

Case in point.